Backed by Y Combinator (S18)

Lab: George ChurchAdvisor: George Church

Lab: George ChurchAdvisor: George Church

Lab: Farren IsaacsAdvisor: Farren IsaacsDissertation: In a multi-institutional collaboration that spanned the laboratories of Dieter Söll, Jesse Rinehart and George Church, we changed the genetic code of E. coli. The goal of this work was to enable encoding of unnatural amino acids (UAAs) that expand the functionalities of proteins and impart genetic isolation to GMOs. As safe molecular factories, these strains could be used to produce unique industrial protein products, and possess orthogonal genetic codes that impede the sharing of genetic information with their environment.

Lab: Daniel PortnoyAdvisors: John-Demian Sauer and Daniel PortnoyResearch: I studied mechanisms by which L. monocytogenes stimulates the innate immune response during infection. I applied genetic and chemical biological approaches to understand the mechanism by which certain genes contribute to this process.

Lab: Donna FerrieroAdvisor: Donna FerrieroResearch: I studied the pathobiology of hypoxic ischemic injury in the developing nervous system. Staining and imaging methods were used to identify and characterize regions of damage in the murine brain.