Guest Speakers
Tae Seok Moon, PhD
Associate Professor, Washington University, St. Louis
EBRC council member (Engineering Biology Research Consortium), SynBYSS chair (Synthetic Biology Young Speaker Series), Editorial Advisory Board Member for ACS Synthetic Biology, MIT Educational Counselor, iGEM Grant Committee Member
Dr Moon's research encompasses chemistry, metabolic engineering, systems biology, and
synthetic biology. His current projects include engineering probiotics for controlling neurotransmitters and the human microbiome; using multi-omics to investigate changes in the regulatory network of engineered Rhodococcus for waste valorization; establishing generalizable models for design of RNA regulators and genetic circuits; and developing kill-switches for biocontainment.
Kevin Solomon, PhD
Assistant Professor, University of Delaware
Dr Solomon's lab lab pioneers new microbial species for biotechnology and develops synthetic biology tools to manipulate these non-model systems. His work identifies solutions to current challenges in sustainability and health that have been honed by eons of evolution in environmental microbes. For example, current projects engineer fungi native to the digestive tracts of large herbivores for lignocellulose degradation (renewable bioenergy) and microbial communities from mealworms for plastics degradation.
Howard Salis, PhD
Associate Professor, Pennsylvania State University
The Salis lab develops computational models to explain gene expression and regulation in terms of biophysical principles and to improve tools for engineering biology. Tools like the RBS Calculator enable design and optimization of genetic circuits, synthetic genomes, and biological metabolism for biomanufacturing, biosensing, and biocomputing applications.
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Tom Ellis, PhD
Professor, Imperial College, London
The Ellis lab pioneers new tools and methods to advance the field of synthetic biology, including synthetic genomics, modular genetic circuits, metabolic engineering, and biosensing and signalling. Recent projects have harnessed synthetic biology in bacteria and yeast to produce engineered living materials, which enable production of functionalized microbial cellulose and multispecies symbiotic biosensors.
Omar Akbari, PhD
Professor, University of California, San Diego
Dr Akbari's work aims to improve understanding of the genetics and physiology of mosquitoes and leverage this knowledge with synthetic biology to develop novel, innovative, and effective genetic control techniques to decrease the disease burden of mosquito-borne pathogens. Current research focuses on engineering mosquitoes that are resistant to human pathogens and developing methods for gene drives to rapidly disperse genetic modifications into populations of wild mosquitoes.
Jennifer Loeb, Promega
Sr. Global Commercialization Marketing Manager - Academics at Promega
Promega is a major biomanufacturing corporation that supplies products for genomics and cell biology research, proteomics, drug discovery, and forensics.
Vatsan Raman, PhD
Assistant Professor, University of Wisconsin, Madison
The goal of the Raman laboratory is to understand how genetic perturbations in bacteriophages and hosts influence their mutual interactions using high-throughput approaches, and to engineer programmable synthetic bacteriophages for biotechnological applications.
Anne Meyer, PhD
Associate Professor, University of Rochester
Dr Meyer's research focuses on using quantitative techniques in the fields of biochemistry, microbiology, and biophysics to study structural dynamics, macromolecular interactions, and physiological responses of organisms to environmental stressors. She also uses tools of synthetic biology to engineer novel functions into microorganisms, with a particular focus on the production of improved, tunable biomaterials and the development of new tools for 3D patterning of bacteria.
Thomas Gorochowski, PhD
Royal Society Research Fellow & Principal Investigator, University of Bristol
Dr Gorochowski is co-director of the Bristol BioDesign Institute (BBI) and a Royal Society Research Fellow at the University of Bristol. His laboratory focuses on elucidating the fundamental principles underpinning how living cells compute to process information about their world and ultimately make decisions. By applying different tools from synthetic biology, Dr. Gorochowski’s and his lab are attempting to create new genetic systems from the ground-up, and testing these systems using a diverse range of sequencing methods and advanced computational models.
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SnapGene
SnapGene provides software tools for molecular biology that help scientists plan, visualize, and document their experiments.
José Antonio Alonso Pavón
PhD Candidate in Biological Sciences, Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México
José Antonio Alonso Pavón is an organizer of Gogec and head of the Research Integrity Committee. He has a degree in Genomic Sciences from the National University of México. His interests include analysis of the social construction of knowledge in genetics within the scientific community, as well as the dynamics between society and the scientific community. He also seeks to understand how the appropriation of scientific knowledge occurs alongside cultural elements, in scientific communication between peers, in education, and in dissemination of scientific information to society.