(3kb) Linking Process-Scale Innovations to Systems-Scale Sustainability

I am a Postdoctoral Researcher specializing in sustainable process design through agile systems analyses in the Energy & Biosciences Institute at the University of California, Berkeley. I completed my Ph.D. degree in the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign in February 2025.

Dissertation Research

My Ph.D. research focused on expediting the research, development, and deployment (RD&D) of emerging technologies to advance circular bioeconomies. I am a core developer of BioSTEAM, an open-source platform in Python for techno-economic analysis (TEA) and life cycle assessment (LCA) under uncertainty. I have leveraged BioSTEAM to perform system design and analyses in collaborative work spanning domains including metabolic engineering, catalysis, and separations, validated at laboratory and pilot scales. I am the creator and lead developer of AutoSynthesis, an open-source platform to automate process design that is being used commercially by Bluestem Biosciences, a synthetic biology company. My work has led to six peer-reviewed publications (in journals including Nature Communications, ACS Sustainable Chemistry & Engineering, Chemical Engineering Journal, and Metabolic Engineering) and five more submitted manuscripts (to journals including Nature Biotechnology and Green Chemistry), and has yielded key insights for future development pathways in emerging biomanufacturing technologies. Through my work at the Center for Bioenergy and Bioproducts Innovation (CABBI), I have connected scientists and engineers across multiple disciplines with the systems-scale sustainability implications of process-level decisions across laboratory and pilot scales. I have assisted with writing proposals for seven grants (five awarded; total budget $163 MM).

Research Interests

As a professor at a research-focused institute, I intend to develop and leverage tools to design strategically integrated systems and rapidly connect scientists and engineers with the system-scale sustainability implications of process-level decisions in RD&D. To this end, I plan: (i) to develop end-to-end tools to expedite discovery and development by automating the design of strategically integrated systems; (ii) to characterize system-scale sustainability implications of alternative climate, policy, market, and societal contexts; and (iii) to motivate and prioritize present-day RD&D needs by charting quantitative technology innovation roadmaps to navigate the opportunity space under evolving and uncertain future contexts.

Teaching Interests

I have assisted in teaching and developed new course content during two semesters at UIUC and am interested in teaching courses related to process modeling, separations, thermodynamics, systems analysis, and sustainable design. I would be excited to develop a new course that leverages open-source tools from my research for active, experiential learning.