Advisory Board and Editors Synthetic Biology
Edward A. Bayer
Professor, Wishner Chair of Bio-organic Chemistry. Early development of avidin-biotin technology. Co-discoverer of the cellulosome concept. Editor/Editoral Board: Biotechnology Advances, Biotechnology for Biofuels, Current Opinion in Biotechnology, Industrial Biotechnology. Member of Scientific Advisory Board, US-DOE BioEnergy Science Center (BESC). Sarstedt Research Award, The Ulitzky Prize, Fellowship of the American Academy of Microbiology and European Academy of Microgiology.
Dario T Bonetta
Associate professor in Faculty of Science at Ontario Tech University. Co-founder Metasys Genomics Corp. Interests include: biologically based materials derived from plant and bacterial sources; plant and animal development; inter-kingdom signalling and cell communication.
Bettina Böttcher
Professor for Biochemistry with Focus on electron Cryo Microscopy at the Julius Maximilians University Würzburg
Saverio Brogna
Lecturer and principal investigator at the School of Biosciences of the University of Birmingham, UK. Interested in eukaryotic gene expression and particularly in understanding the links between RNA processing and translation.
At present his group research focuses on understanding nonsense mediated mRNA decay (NMD) and its links with pre-mRNA splicing.
Albert Cheng
Albert Cheng obtained his BSc in Biochemistry and MPhil in Biology from Hong Kong University of Science and Technology in 2005 and 2007, respectively. He studied neurotrophin signaling and C. elegans developmental genetics. He then pursued his PhD in Computational & Systems Biology at MIT in the labs of Profs Christopher Burge and Rudolf Jaenisch and worked on various topics on epigenetics, gene regulation and alternative splicing in stem cells, reprogramming, cancer metastasis, erythropoiesis and differentiation. Cheng and colleagues identified H3K27ac as a signature for active enhancers. He analyzed alternative splicing in epithetlial-mesenchymal transition, cancer metastasis as well as erythropoiesis and identified splicing factors regulating these processes. He constructed CRISPR-on, an artificial RNA-guided activator based on CRISPR/Cas. After graduating in 2014, he joined the Jackson Laboratory at Bar Harbor, ME, as one of the first JAX scholars where he continued to work on understanding and improving the CRISPR/Cas technology. In July 2015, he started his own lab as an assistant professor at the Jackson Laboratory for Genomic Medicine campus at Farmington, CT.
Christopher Cooper
Senior Lecturer in Biological Sciences at the University of Huddersfield, since 2015. Previously Junior Research Fellow, College Lecturer In Biochemistry and various postdocs at the University of Oxford (2013-15). Working on DNA replication, genome integrity and transcription factors in human cancers (and also in prokaryotes). Additional interests in phylogenomics and novel protein expression systems.
Rumiana Dimova
Group leader at the Max Planck Institute of Colloids and Interfaces since 2005
PhD in Biophysics from Bordeaux University
Awarded the Emmy Noether Distinction for Women in Physics in 2014
Research interests: mechanical, rheological and electrical properties of membranes, colloidal interactions, molecular crowding
Drew Endy
Faculty of Bioengineering, Stanford University. Helped start BioBricks (biobricks.org) and iGEM (igem.org), and is a member of the US National Advisory Board for Biosecurity (biosecurityboard.gov).
Mario Alberto Flores-Valdez
Dr. Mario Alberto Flores-Valdez is a Professor in the Medical and Pharmaceutical Biotechnology Unit, CIATEJ, A.C., Guadalajara, Jalisco, Mexico (2007-present). He is a member of the National System of Researchers (SNI), and a member of the Mexican Academy of Sciences. He was a Stanford University Medical Center postdoctoral fellow (2004-2007), where he received a Dean's Fellowship Award (2006) to conduct research on Tuberculosis. He worked in UNAM as Research Assistant for Prof. Jaime Mora (2004) and Prof. Emundo Calva (2003). He has received a Ph.D. in Biochemistry from UNAM (1999-2003), a M.Sc. in Molecular Biology and Genetic Engineering from UANL (1996-1999) and a B.Sc. from Universidad de Sonora (1991-1996) in Chemistry and Biology. He received fellowships from CONACYT for M.Sc. and Ph.D. studies and in M.Sc. and B.Sc. has received Diplomas as Best Student. He has expertise in Tuberculosis, particularly in developing recombinant BCG strains. He has been PI for 7 grants from 2008 to date, focused in studies about tuberculosis vaccine development and basic aspects of mycobacterial physiology.
Shawn M Gomez
Professor, Joint Department of Biomedical Engineering at UNC-CH and NCSU and Department of Pharmacology at UNC-CH. Previous Florence Gould Scholar and Pasteur Foundation Fellow. Current research interests in systems and synthetic biology, bioimage informatics, and network science applied to biology. Broader interests in translational medicine and the fostering of innovative solutions to problems in healthcare.
Kyou-Hoon Han
Professor and Senior Investigator, Department of Bioinformatics, University of Science and Technology. Senior Investigator, Biomedical Translational Research Center, Korea Research Institute of Bioscience and Biotechnology (KRIBB)
Karmella A Haynes
Karmella Haynes is an assistant professor at Arizona State University’s School of Biological and Health Systems Engineering and judge emeritus for the International Genetically Engineered Machines Competition. Her work with Davidson College students on bacterial computers was featured on NPR's Science Friday and was recognized as "Publication of the Year" in 2008 by the Journal of Biological Engineering. Her research aims to regulate therapeutic genes by engineering human chromosomes.