(2bs) Exploiting Microbial Communities through Systems Biology and Synthetic Biology

My research interests lie at the intersection of microbiome engineering, synthetic biology, and systems biology. I am deeply enthusiastic to pursue a career in academia and contribute to the field of microbiome engineering.

I am particularly fascinated by the potential utilizations of synthetic microbial communities for biomedical, bioenergy, and biomaterial applications. I am currently working on multiple projects with collaborators to rationally design microbial consortia for inhibition of human gut pathogen Clostridioides difficile. Looking ahead, I envision establishing a research program that focuses on human gut microbiome engineering, nurturing a collaborative and innovative environment where interdisciplinary approaches drive transformative discoveries. I will leverage the design-test-learn cycle of therapeutic development to incorporate fundamental microbiology mechanisms discovery with state-of-the-art computational tools.

My past research experience granted my knowledge in both tool development and mechanism investigation to understand and harness the power of microbial communities to address pressing global challenges. As my first project in the Venturelli lab, I assessed the validity of a duplexed essential gene complementation toolkit for antibiotic-free plasmid maintenance in vitro and in vivo. Through analysis of this toolkit, I gained appreciation for building and applying synthetic biology tools for microbiome engineering. For my second project, I explored microbial interspecies interactions, which are fundamental to microbiome engineering. Specifically, I investigated the effect of arginine dihydrolase pathway, a specialized metabolic pathway, on the assembly and function of gut microbial consortia in vitro and in vivo. These projects have culminated in two first-author manuscripts in review, along with one review published in ARBME.

Aside from research, I was invited for poster and oral presentation at regional and national conferences including Central US SynBio Workshop and SEED. During my years in Ph.D., I have contributed to the writing of NIH and NSF grant proposals. I have received multiple fellowships including the Jensen Family Graduate Fellowship and the Sunny and Po Lo Fellowship.

Teaching Interests

I am passionate about teaching and mentoring the next generation of scientists. I have served as teaching assistant to two upper undergraduate level chemical engineering classes and mentored multiple graduate and undergraduate students. To improve on my teaching and mentoring skills, I have enrolled to obtain The Delta Certificate in Research, Teaching, and Learning at UW Madison. I have taken several teaching and mentorship training courses including Research Mentor Training, Intro to Evidence-Based STEM Teaching, and First year faculty summer teaching academy. All these courses empowered me with evidence-based methods for teaching and mentoring. Through the Delta program, I was given the opportunity to complete a Teaching-as-Research internship to design better DEI discussion classes in STEM education. Altogether, I have formulated my teaching and mentoring philosophy to recognize the individuality of students and regularly asking for feedback so that I can improve my teaching and mentoring approaches.