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The Center for Synthetic Biology (CSB) recently welcomed five early researchers to the CSB Postdoctoral Fellowship Program. The inaugural cohort will engage in cutting-edge synthetic biology at Northwestern for one year and receive mentorship from one or more CSB faculty members.

“It was difficult to choose from so many terrific applicants,” said CSB Co-director Danielle Tullman-Ercek. “Everyone brings so much to the table. We look forward to working with these talented researchers on several exciting synbio projects.”

Fellows will be expected to conduct independent research that aligns with one or more of the CSB’s Collaborative Research Areas: Cell-free Biomanufacturing, Synthetic Biological Materials, Synthetic Immunology, Sustainable Biochemical Production, and Biosensors & Diagnostics, or Human Therapeutics. The researchers will engage in cross-cutting high-throughput discovery techniques, computational approaches, and other approaches. They will also present at CSB’s Annual Retreat, among other activities.

In addition to a vibrant research environment and community, the program provides opportunities for fellows to engage with faculty and trainees from across Northwestern, including the McCormick School of Engineering, the Weinberg College of Arts and Sciences and the Feinberg School of Medicine.

The 2025 CSB Postdoctoral Fellows are:

 

Anibal Arce, PhD
PhD Research Field and Institution: Molecular Biology and Microbiology, Pontifical Catholic University of Chile
Department: Chemical and Biological Engineering, Lucks LabPrevious Work/Research Experience:

Since completing his PhD in Chile, Anibal’s research has focused on RNA synthetic biology. During his PhD, he developed synthetic riboswitches that respond to RNA and trigger structural changes to regulate gene expression These could be applied for detection of RNA pathogens, for example. He also created low-cost protocols to increase access to these tools, particularly in resource-constrained settings, such as those often encountered in Latin America.

Research Focus:

Anibal’s current work in the Lucks lab and CSB is centered on expanding biosensing capabilities by using individually purified components and optimizing them for practical applications. Specifically, he is advancing the mechanisms of transcriptional-based biosensing through riboswitch-based sensors and native polymerases, using high-throughput screening methods to optimize their performance for real-world applications. He hopes that by using these approaches, he can also contribute to gaining fundamental knowledge on the native mechanisms that organisms use to sense and adapt to their environment.

Ekta Bhattacharya, PhD
PhD Research Field and Institution: Phytochemistry, Indian Statistical Institute, Kolkata
Department: Materials Research Center, Tullman-Ercek Lab

Previous Work/Research Experience:

Ekta earned her PhD in India where she was born. She is a plant biologist specializing in Plant biochemistry. Most of her research is focused on identifying the role of plant bioactives as plant signaling compounds. She has identified certain phytochemicals that have huge role in phytoremediation of plant rhizosphere. She has also worked in identifying certain plant secondary metabolites that work as urease inhibitors leading to improving the Nitrogen Utilization Efficiency (NUE) of plants.

Current Research Focus:

Ekta joined the Tullman-Ercek Lab as a part of SmartSense project. This project aims to develop Smart precision agriculture tools. She is working on developing a biocompatible, biosensor-based urease inhibitor delivery system that would have a more regulated and targeted application. This project’s overall goal is to improve agricultural outcomes reducing the harmful effects of overuse of chemical fertilizers.

Nitu Kumari, PhD
PhD Research Field and Institution: Biochemistry and Molecular Biology, Indian Institute of Science (IISc)
Department and Lab: Cell & Developmental Biology, Goyal Lab

Previous Work/Research Experience:

Nitu completed her PhD at Indian Institute of Science, India. During that time, she studied DNA repair pathways, non-B DNA structures, and chromosomal translocations. She focused on Ligase IV’s role in maintaining genome stability, particularly in repairing single-stranded DNA breaks at thymine-rich sequences and aiding replication fork restart under genomic stress. She demonstrated that Ligase IV binds to AT-rich fragile sites during replication stress, revealing a previously uncharacterized function in safeguarding fragile sites and ensuring efficient DNA replication.

Current Research Focus:

In the Goyal lab, Nitu is engineering cellular systems to understand and control how individual cancer cells make fate decisions during drug treatment. Despite advances in cancer therapies, drug resistance remains a major challenge where some cells within genetically identical populations survive treatment while others die, leading to tumor relapse. Nitu’s research harnesses synthetic biology tools to monitor, perturb and control these variable cell fate decisions in cancer. Using an innovative platform that combines DNA barcoding with single-cell sequencing techniques, she is investigating how single-cell variability leads to diverse therapeutic responses. Through this approach, she aims to develop new strategies for controlling cell fate decisions, potentially leading to more effective therapies that can predict and prevent drug resistance

Neha Tyagi, PhD
PhD Research Field and Institution: Theoretical Chemistry, Indian Institute of Science (IISc)
Department and Lab: Chemical and Biological Engineering, Shrinivas Lab

Previous Work/Research Experience:

Neha completed her PhD in theoretical chemistry from Indian Institute of Science, India. During that time, her research was focused on the fundamental understanding of the non-equilibrium dynamics of condensed phased systems. She has built on several mathematical models to explain, rationalize or interpret the experimental, simulation or other theories observations mainly on the behavior of small systems which are typically the paradigm of the complex systems found in Nature. Then, she held a postdoctoral research position in the Department of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. In that position, Neha combined her analytical skills with computational techniques to study the effect of hydrodynamic interactions on the diffusive transport of particles in semi dilute polymer solutions, establishing flow-transport design rules useful for controlling the nanoscale motion of particles.

Current Research Focus:

In her current position at Northwestern University, Neha works with the Shrinivas lab and CSB to design a library of synthetic condensate-architectural intrinsically disordered proteins exhibiting complex phase behavior. This involves the use of machine learning techniques based on differential models to invert the physical laws describing sequence-property relationships. The developed design principles will be validated through the slab simulations. The overall goal is to bridge the machine learning algorithms and physical models to engineer the design rules of various interesting biomolecular circuits.

Sara Volz, PhD
PhD Research Field and Institution: Biophysics, University of California, Berkeley
Department and Lab: Pharmacology, Rocklin Lab

Previous Work/Research Experience:

In her undergraduate work at MIT, Sara worked on building CRISPR-Cas9 tools for genetic engineering applications, including contributing to the development of split-Cas9 systems that can be activated by inducer molecules. In her graduate work at UC Berkeley, she used biophysical tools to study the energy landscapes of proteins in great detail emphasizing experimental conditions relevant to physiological function. In studying the eye lens protein γD-crystallin, she used hydrogen-deuterium exchange mass spectrometry to identify partially unfolded states that could be significant to cataract formation. Using single-molecule optical trapping, Sara also found that ubiquitination—a post-translational modification that can serve as a degradation signal–can change how a protein responds to unfolding via force, which is the means by which the proteasome unfolds proteins prior to degrading them.

Current Research Focus:

Understanding how a protein’s amino acid sequence controls biophysical properties like stability, folding, and reactivity is key to designing better enzymes and learning the underpinnings of protein function and disfunction. Sara’s current work seeks to map the sequence-function landscape of the reactive protein SpyCatcher, which will serve as a model for enzymatic activity, by using cDNA display, a means to chemically link proteins to their DNA sequences, to assay ~ one million variants, including de novo designed SpyCatchers. The project’s aim is to generate high-quality, large-scale datasets to uncover the rules of reactive protein design and inform future engineering efforts.

Top photo: Ekta Bhattacharya (Tullman-Ercek Lab), Sara Volz (Rocklin Lab), Nitu Kumari (Goyal Lab), Anibal Arce (Lucks Lab) and Neha Tyagi (Shrinivas Lab)