Lukas Farbiak, Ph.D. Email & Phone Number

Currently, I am an Assistant Professor in the Program for Genetic Drug Engineering at UT Southwestern Medical Center in the Department of Biomedical Engineering and affiliated with the Department of Biochemistry and Simmons Comprehensive Cancer Center. I received a B.S. in neuroscience with honors from Baylor University in 2013 and subsequently completed a M.S. in medical science from UNT Health Science Center in 2014. Following this, I joined the lab of Dr. Daniel Siegwart at UT Southwestern Medical Center in 2016 and obtained a Ph.D. in biomedical engineering (2021). During my doctoral training, I developed and optimized non-viral carriers for CRISPR/Cas9 gene editing machinery, specifically focusing on the utilization of homology-directed repair to induce correction of DNA mutations in vivo. Shortly thereafter I completed a postdoctoral fellowship (2023) in the Siegwart lab concentrating my research efforts on the development of novel genetic medicines. My areas of expertise encompass the development of non-viral carriers for a variety of therapeutic genetic medicines, including mRNA, siRNA, and pDNA, and gene editing technologies such as CRISPR/Cas systems and base editors. Currently, my research is concentrated on the design and generation of novel genetic constructs and non-viral delivery vehicles for a broad range of therapeutic indications. Ultimately, my goal is to enhance quality of life on a global scale by furthering our present understanding of translational nanomedicine therapeutics and applications from a clinically motivated perspective.