Keynote Speakers:
- James Collins, Massachusetts Institute of Technology
- Jay Keasling, University of California, Berkeley
- Floyd E. Romesberg, The Scripps Research Institute
- Pamela Ronald, University of California, Davis
Additional Speakers:
- Hulya Akdemir Koc, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute
- Jacob Beal, Raytheon BBN Technologies
- Ahanjit Bhattacharya, University of California San Diego
- Alice Boo, Imperial College London
- Lisa Burdette, University of California, Berkeley
- Amphun Chaiboonchoe, New York University Abu Dhabi
- Anushree Chatterjee, University of Colorado Boulder
- Hui Chen, Conagen
- Carl de Boer, Broad Institute
- Linda Dekker, Imperial College London
- Ilenne Del Valle, Rice University
- Mo Ebrahimkhani, Arizona State University/Mayo Clinic
- Tom Ellis, Imperial College London
- Iman Farasat, Merck
- Jenna Gallegos, Colorado State University
- Ben Gordon, Massachusetts Institute of Technology - Broad Foundry
- Guido Grossi, Aarhus University
- Shakked O. Halperin, University of California, Berkeley
- Kevin Holden, Synthego
- Tammy M. Hsu, University of California, Berkeley
- Hsin-Ho Huang, Massachusetts Institute of Technology
- Samira Kiani, Arizona State University
- Aditya Kunjapur, Harvard Medical School
- Joshua LaBaer, Arizona State University
- Yan Liang, Joint BioEnergy Institute, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory
- Theresa B. Loveless, University of California, Irvine
- Leonardo Morsut, University of Southern California
- Nikhil U. Nair, Tufts University
- Cheryl A. Nickerson, Arizona State University
- Minhee Park, Boston University
- Nikit Patel, Boston University
- Pamela Peralta-Yahya, Georgia Institute of Technology
- Abe Pressman, University of California, Santa Barbara
- Pradeep Ramesh, California Institute of Technology
- Itzel Ramos, REG Life Sciences
- Eric W. Schmidt, University of Utah
- Helena Shomar, Delft University of Technology
- Barrett Steinberg, Editas Medicine
- Tanya Tschirhart, Naval Research Laboratory
- Timothy M. Wannier, Harvard Medical School
- Wilson Wong, Boston University
- Di Wu, California Institute of Technology
- Huimin Zhao, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Government Panelists:
- Jermont Chen, Asian Office of Aerospace Research & Development (AOARD)
- Linda A. Chrisey, U.S. Office of Naval Research (ONR)
- J. Aura Gimm, U.S. Army Research Office (ARO)
- Elebeoba (Chi-Chi) May, National Science Foundation (NSF)
- Pablo Rabinowicz, U.S. Department of Energy (DOE)
- David Rampulla, U.S. National Institute for Biomedical Imaging and Bioengineering (NIBIB)
- Patrick Rose, U.S. Office of Naval Research (ONR)
Industrial Panelists:
- Adam Fisher, Synlogic
- Richard Fox, Inscripta
- Alex Juminaga, Lanzatech
- Eric Moessinger, Nano Dimension
- Will Schroeder, Ginkgo Bioworks
James Collins
James J. Collins is the Termeer Professor of Medical Engineering & Science and Professor of Biological Engineering at MIT. His research group focuses on using network biology approaches to study antibiotic action, bacterial defense mechanisms, and the emergence of resistance. His patented technologies have been licensed by over 25 companies.Read more
Jay Keasling
Jay Keasling is the Philomathia Professor of Alternative Energy at the University of California, Berkeley in the Departments of Bioengineering and Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering, senior faculty scientist at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, and Chief Executive Officer of the Joint BioEnergy Institute (JBEI). Dr. Keasling’s research focuses on the metabolic engineering of microorganisms for degradation of environmental contaminants or for environmentally friendly synthesis of drugs, chemicals, and fuels.Read more
Floyd E. Romesberg
Floyd E. Romesberg is best known for developing unnatural base pairs for the expansion of the genetic alphabet. His research group at The Scripps Research Institute uses a broad range of techniques, including non-linear optical spectroscopy, organic chemistry, microbiology, and genetics, to study different aspects of evolution. This work has been described in more than 100 peer-reviewed publications. Dr. Romesberg is also the scientific founder and a member of the board of directors of Synthorx.Read more
Pamela Ronald
Pamela Ronald is a Distinguished Professor in the Department of Plant Pathology and the Genome Center at the University of California, Davis. Ronald and her collaborators were instrumental in identifying genes of rice that control the rice response to infection and tolerance to stress. In 2016 she was named by Grist magazine as one of the 50 innovators and visionaries who will lead us toward a more sustainable future.Read more
Amphun Chaiboonchoe
Amphun Chaiboonchoe is a research scientist at New York University Abu Dhabi (NYUAD). Her research focuses on systems level study of algal metabolism to explore evolutionary questions on metabolic circuitry and its embedded phenotype-genotype relations.Read more
Anushree Chatterjee
Dr. Anushree Chatterjee is an Assistant Professor of Chemical and Biological Engineering at University of Colorado Boulder. The overarching goal of her research is to develop strategies for rationally engineering next-generation smart antimicrobials that can eliminate multi-drug resistant superbugs.Read more
John Dueber
Dr. John Dueber is the Associate Professor of Bioengineering at University of California, Berkeley. The Dueber Lab develops strategies for introducing designable, modular control over living cells.Read more
Mo Ebrahimkhani
Mo Ebrahimkhani is an Associate Professor at Department of Pathology, University of Pittsburgh. His lab combines human stem cells, synthetic biology and in vivo mouse models to understand tissue development and regeneration and develop technologies to modulate these processes in a personalized fashion.Read more
Jenna Gallegos
Jenna Gallegos is a postdoctoral fellow in Jean Peccoud’s lab at Colorado State University, which uses synthetic biology to explore the application of computer languages to genetic engineering and the emerging field of Cyberbiosecurity.Read more
Guido Grossi
Guido Grossi is a postdoctoral researcher in the Andersen Lab for Biomolecular Design at Aarhus University, Denmark.Read more
Samira Kiani
Samira Kiani’s career is built around her passion for applying the CRISPR technology to synthetic biology. At Arizona State University, she has established her research program to combine CRISPR technology with Synthetic biology with an interest to develop safer and controllable gene therapies.Read more
Aditya Kunjapur
Aditya is currently a Post-Doctoral Research Fellow in the laboratory of George Church at Harvard Medical School. In 2017, he received a fellowship for his efforts to improve genetic biocontainment by engineered synthetic auxotrophy.Read more
Joshua LaBaer
Joshua LaBaer is one of the nation’s foremost investigators in the rapidly expanding field of personalized diagnostics. His efforts focus on the discovery and validation of biomarkers — unique molecular fingerprints of disease — which can provide early warning for those at risk of major illnesses, including cancer and diabetes.Read more
Leonardo Morsut
Dr. Leonardo Morsut, assistant professor of Stem Cell Biology and Regenerative Medicine at USC, applies the synthetic biology framework to implement developmental programs in stem cells to guide their development into user-specified tissue in vitro, with applications in tissue engineering and regenerative medicine problems.Read more
Cheryl A. Nickerson
Dr. Cheryl A. Nickerson is a Professor in the School of Life Sciences at the Biodesign Institute at Arizona State University. Her internationally recognized research blends microbiology, tissue engineering, and physics to mimic the dynamic interactions between the host, its microenvironment, and microorganisms.Read more
Pamela Peralta-Yahya
Pamela Peralta-Yahya is currently an assistant professor in the School of Chemistry and Biochemistry at the Georgia Institute of Technology. Her group works at the interphase of biochemistry and engineering and focuses on two research areas.Read more
Zheng Wang
Dr. Zheng Wang has more than 20 years research experience in the area of microbiology, molecular biology, genomics and radiation biology.Read more
Jermont Chen
Jermont Chen is the Deputy Director and Program Officer for Synthetic Biology and Chemistry with the Air Force Research Laboratory’s Asian Office of Aerospace Research and Development (AOARD) in Tokyo, Japan. AOARD maintains awareness of Air Force-relevant basic research topics.Read more
Linda A. Chrisey
Dr. Linda A. Chrisey has been a program officer at the Office of Naval Research (ONR) since 1998, where she is currently the lead for ONR’s Team Bio as well as manager for research programs spanning several areas, including Synthetic Biology, Microbial Energy Harvesting, Marine Biofouling, and Gut Microbiology.Read more
Pablo Rabinowicz
Dr. Pablo Rabinowicz is the Program Manager in the Biological and Environmental Research Program in the Department of Energy, where he manages the Biosystems Design element within the Genomic Science program and is a member of the DOE Joint Genome Institute (DOE-JGI) management team.Read more
David Rampulla
Dr. Rampulla is a Program Director at the National Institute for Biomedical Imaging and Bioengineering (NIBIB). He manages a long-standing program in biomaterials and the recently established program in synthetic biology.Read more