I am a Postdoctoral Scholar in the Department of Pediatrics at the University of California San Diego, working in the Knight Lab. I am an engineer and microbiologist whose work sits at the intersection of synthetic biology, microbiome science, and quantitative sequencing technologies.
My research focuses on understanding how microbial communities evolve and function in different environments, and on using that knowledge to design engineered microbes and quantitative tools that can improve human health. As a Ph.D. student in Dr. Jeff Hasty’s lab at UC San Diego, I developed the synchronized lysis circuit (SLC) and related synthetic microbial ecosystems for therapeutic delivery, leading to publications in Nature, Nature Microbiology, Science, and Science Advances.
More recently, in the Knight Lab, I have been developing long-read metagenomics approaches that resolve microbiomes down to individual strains and alleles and enable quantitative measurements from sequencing data over time. I apply these methods to various questions in human health and environmental microbial surveillance.
I also gained translational experience with GenCirq, Inc., a biotechnology start-up that commercializes engineered bacterial therapeutics based on synthetic gene circuits originally developed during my graduate work.
Formal training
– Ph.D., Bioengineering (2012–2017), University of California San Diego
– B.S., Chemical Engineering (2008–2011), University of California San Diego