Faculty
Center Faculty
Julius B. Lucks
Director of the Center for Synthetic Biology; Professor of Chemical and Biological Engineering; Associate Chair of Chemical & Biological Engineering
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Julius B. Lucks is Associate Professor of Chemical and Biological Engineering at Northwestern University. Research in the Lucks group combines both experiment and theory to ask fundamental questions about the design principles that govern how RNAs fold and function in living organisms, how these principles can be used to computationally design and evolve nucleic acids with new function, how molecular systems compute and process information through dynamic folding processes, and recently how cell free synthetic biology can be used to create simple, low-cost and smart diagnostics to empower individuals to monitor the health of themselves and the environment. For his research, Professor Lucks has been recognized with a number of awards including a DARPA Young Faculty Award, an Alfred P. Sloan Foundation Research Fellowship, an ONR Young Investigator Award, an NIH New Innovator Award, an NSF CAREER award, the ACS Synthetic Biology Young Investigator Award, and a Camille-Dreyfus Teacher Scholar Award. He is a founding member of the Engineering Biology Research Consortium, and together with Jeff Tabor and others he co-founded the Cold Spring Harbor Synthetic Biology Summer Course.
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Danielle Tullman-Ercek
Director of the Center for Synthetic Biology; Professor of Chemical and Biological Engineering; Director, Master of Science in Biotechnology Program
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Danielle Tullman-Ercek is an Associate Professor in the Department of Chemical and Biological Engineering at Northwestern University. Danielle received her B.S. in Chemical Engineering at Illinois Institute of Technology in Chicago and her Ph.D. in Chemical Engineering from the University of Texas at Austin. She carried out postdoctoral research at UCSF and the Joint Bioenergy Institute, while part of the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. In 2009, she joined the Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering faculty at the University of California Berkeley, where she held the Charles Wilke Endowed Chair of Chemical Engineering and later the Merck Chair of Biochemical Engineering. In 2016, she moved her lab to Northwestern University. Her research focuses on building biomolecular devices for applications in bioenergy, living batteries, and drug delivery, and she is particularly interested in engineering multi-protein complexes, such as the machines that transport proteins and small molecules across cellular membranes. She is a member of the Engineering Biology Research Center (formerly the Synthetic Biology Engineering Research Center), and was awarded an NSF CAREER award for her work on the construction of bacterial organelles using protein membranes.
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Ludmilla Aristilde
Associate Professor of Civil and Environmental Engineering and (by courtesy) Chemical and Biological Engineering
847-491-2999
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Ludmilla Aristilde is an Associate Professor in the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering and (by courtesy) Department of Chemical and Biological Engineering at Northwestern University. Ludmillacompleted a dual degree in B.S. and B.F.A. at Cornell University, her M.S./Ph.D. at the University of California-Berkeley. After Berkeley, she went to France as a Fulbright scholar followed by postdoctoral work at Princeton University in environmental chemistry and metabolomics at the Institute of Integrative Genomics. Her research group combines experimental and computational molecular-scale approaches to elucidate the mechanisms of environmental organic processes, with the goal of guiding the engineering of these processes for sustainable carbon and nutrient recycling. The focus areas of her research group are bacterial metabolism in complex nutrient conditions, dynamics of nutrient-cycling extracellular enzymes, and physical chemistry of organic compounds at mineral interfaces. With importance to biotechnology, her research team has applied multi-omics approaches (metabolomics, fluxomics, and proteomics) to gain new insights into metabolic regulations of mixed-substrate utilization by relevant soil bacteria of Clostridium, Pseudomonas, and Bacillus species. She was awarded a NSF CAREER award for her work on the application of metabolomics-enabled approaches to obtain novel molecular insights in what controls carbon cycling processes in environmental matrices.
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Linda Broadbelt
Sarah Rebecca Roland Professor; Professor of Chemical and Biological Engineering; Associate Dean for Research
847-467-1751
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Linda Broadbelt is the Sarah Rebecca Roland Professor in the Department of Chemical and Biological Engineering (ChBE) and Associate Dean for Research of Engineering at Northwestern University. She was Chair of the Department of ChBE from 2009-2017. Her research and teaching interests are in multiscale modeling, complex kinetics modeling, catalysis, novel biochemical pathways, and polymerization/depolymerization kinetics. She served as the Past Chair, Chair, First Vice Chair and Second Vice Chair of the Catalysis and Reaction Engineering Division of AIChE, and also served on the Executive Board of the National Program Committee of AIChE. She is currently an Associate Editor for Industrial &Engineering Chemistry Research. Her honors include selection as the winner of the R.H. Wilhelm Award in Chemical Reaction Engineering from AIChE, the E.V. Murphree Award in Industrial Chemistry and Engineering from the American Chemical Society, the Dorothy Ann and Clarence Ver Steeg Award, a CAREER Award from the National Science Foundation, and an AIChE Women’s Initiative Committee Mentorship Excellence Award, and selection as a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, a Fellow of AIChE, a Fellow of AIMBE, and a Fulbright Distinguished Scholar. She was elected to the National Academy of Engineering in 2019.
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Jaehyuk Choi
Jack W. Graffin Professor; Associate Professor of Dermatology (Medical Dermatology) and Biochemistry and Molecular Genetics
312-503-4108
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Dr. Jaehyuk Choi is the Jack W. Graffin Associate Professor of Dermatology and of Biochemistry and Molecular Genetics. He is a physician scientist whose lab utilizes human patient samples and animal models to identify genetic, epigenetic, and immunological mechanisms underlying skin cancer. The goal has been to identify the immunological mechanisms underlying cancer initiation, disease progression, and drug resistance. They combine computational biology, single-cell approaches, and multi-omic perturbations. Recently, his lab has been interested in utilizing synthetic biology to generate next-generation cellular therapies for these and other cancer types. These efforts have been published in Nature Genetics, Nature Communications, Blood among other journals. His lab has been supported by the NIH New Innovator Award, the Damon Runyon Clinical Investigator Award, and recently by the Mark Foundation Emerging Leader Award.
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Yogesh Goyal
Assistant Professor of Cell and Developmental Biology and (by courtesy) Chemical and Biological Engineering and Biomedical Engineering
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Yogesh Goyal is joining as an Assistant Professor of Cell & Developmental Biology at the Feinberg School of Medicine, Northwestern University starting Spring 2022. Yogesh received his B.Tech. with Honors in Chemical Engineering from the Indian Institute of Technology Gandhinagar, and his Ph.D. in Chemical and Biological Engineering focusing on quantitative developmental biology from Princeton University. Yogesh pursued postdoctoral work in single-cell systems biology in Bioengineering at the University of Pennsylvania. Yogesh’s major honors include Burroughs Wellcome Fund CASI Award, Schmidt Science Fellowship, and the Jane Coffin Childs Fellowship. Yogesh’s group will combine theory, computation, and single-cell resolved experiments to track and control cellular plasticity and fate choices in developing tissues and cancer.
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Michael Jewett
Walter P. Murphy Professor of Chemical and Biological Engineering
847-467-5007
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Michael Jewett is the Charles Deering McCormick Professor of Teaching Excellence and the Walter P. Murphy professor of chemical and biological engineering at Northwestern University. He received his PhD in 2005 from Stanford University. He joined Northwestern in 2009 after completing postdoctoral studies as an NSF International Research Fellow at the Center for Microbial Biotechnology in Denmark and as an NIH Pathway to Independence Fellow at the Harvard Medical School. Dr. Jewett’s lab has made seminal advances that established the field of cell-free biotechnology, enabling on-demand biomanufacturing, fast and portable diagnostics, and next-generation educational kits. In addition, he has engineered tethered ribosomes to establish the first fully orthogonal ribosome-mRNA system in cells that makes it possible to diversify, evolve, and repurpose the ribosome to synthesize new classes of medicines and evolvable matter. Dr. Jewett is the recipient of the NIH Pathway to Independence Award, David and Lucile Packard Fellowship in Science and Engineering, the DARPA Young Faculty Award, Camille-Dreyfus Teacher-Scholar Award, the ACS Biochemical Technologies Division Young Investigator Award, the Biochemical Engineering Journal Young Investigator Award, and a Finalist for the Blavatnik National Awards for Young Scientists, Life Sciences Category.
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Neha Kamat
Assistant Professor of Biomedical Engineering
847-467-2671
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Neha Kamat is an Assistant Professor of Biomedical Engineering at Northwestern University. Neha received her B.S. in Bioengineering from Rice University, her Ph.D. in Bioengineering from the University of Pennsylvania, and completed her postdoctoral training as a NASA Postdoctoral Fellow at Harvard University and Massachusetts General Hospital. Her research group uses techniques in membrane biophysics, microscopy, and membrane reconstitution to assemble artificial cells. Her lab asks fundamental questions about how membrane properties affect membrane protein activities and they design new technologies that harness membrane biophysical changes to execute complex chemical behaviors, like reaction initiation or molecular release.
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Neil Kelleher is a Professor of Chemistry at Northwestern University. After finishing his joint graduate work with Tadhg Begley and Fred McLafferty at Cornell University in 1997, Neil moved to the laboratory of Christopher Walsh at Harvard Medical School. In 2010, the Kelleher Group relocated to Northwestern University where the three main sub-groups continue working in the areas of Top Down Proteomics, Natural Products Biosynthesis/Discovery, and Chromatin Biology. Dr. Kelleher has been successful in driving both technology development and applications of very high performance mass spectrometry in both chemistry and biology. He has over 330 publications, an H-factor of 71, and provides ProSight software via the web to over 2000 labs around the world. The core of the Kelleher Team is built around expertise in technology development for complex mixture analysis using Fourier-Transform Mass Spectrometry for targeted applications in proteomics and metabolomics. Dr. Kelleher harbors specific interests in the biosynthesis and discovery of polyketides and non-ribosomally produced peptides. Further themes of the Kelleher laboratory include using intact proteins for efficient detection of their post-translational modifications, with specific interests in chromatin and cancer biology.
Shana Kelley
Neena B. Schwartz Professor of Chemistry and Biomedical Engineering
847-467-4176
Email Shana KelleyShana Kelley is the Neena B. Schwartz Professor of Chemistry and Biomedical Engineering. The Kelley research group works in a variety of areas spanning biophysical/bioanalytical chemistry, chemical biology and nanotechnology, and has pioneered new methods for tracking molecular and cellular analytes with unprecedented sensitivity. Dr. Kelley’s work has been recognized with a Guggenheim Fellowship, the ACS Inorganic Nanoscience Award, the Pittsburgh Conference Achievement Award, the Steacie Prize, an Alfred P. Sloan Research Fellowship, a Camille Dreyfus Teacher-Scholar award, a NSF CAREER Award, a Dreyfus New Faculty Award, and she was also named a “Top 100 Innovator” by MIT’s Technology Review. Kelley is also a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada, the Canadian Academy of Health Sciences, and the American Institute of Biological and Medical Engineering. Kelley is an inventor on over 50 patents issued worldwide. She is a founder of four molecular diagnostics companies, GeneOhm Sciences (acquired by Becton Dickinson in 2005), Xagenic Inc. (acquired by General Atomics in 2017), Cellular Analytics (founded in 2019) and Arma Biosciences (founded in 2021).
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Sam Kriegman
Assistant Professor of Computer Science; Assistant Professor of Mechanical Engineering; Assistant Professor of Chemical and Biological Engineering
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Sam Kriegman is an assistant professor of computer science, chemical and biological engineering, and mechanical engineering at Northwestern University. His research seeks general theories of life, in which the details of carbon-based organisms would represent a special case. As we have yet to invent a time machine or the means of interstellar travel, Sam and his students design, build and breed robotic lifeforms to catch a glimpse of life as it may have arisen here on Earth or as it might exist elsewhere in the universe. Most recently, this led to the discovery of a previously unknown (kinematic) form of biological reproduction.
Sam received his PhD in computer science and the Outstanding Doctoral Dissertation Award from the University of Vermont in 2020. He conducted postdoctoral research in the biology department at Tufts University and Harvard University. An AI2050 Fellow and Cozzarelli Prize recipient, his creation of the world’s first computer-designed organisms (the “xenobots”; together with his three co-authors) has enjoyed widespread media attention, added a new word (“xenobot”) to the dictionary, and was displayed as an exhibit at the Design Museum in London.
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Joshua Leonard
Associate Professor of Chemical and Biological Engineering
847-491-7455
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Joshua N. Leonard is an associate professor of chemical and biological engineering at Northwestern University. Leonard received a BS from Stanford University in 2000, and a PhD from the University of California, Berkeley in 2006. Leonard then trained as a postdoctoral fellow at the Experimental Immunology Branch of the National Cancer Institute, and he joined the faculty of Northwestern University in 2008. Leonard’s research group engineers novel biological systems that perform customized, sophisticated functions for applications in biotechnology and medicine. Using the tools of mammalian synthetic biology, biomolecular engineering, and systems biology, the group develops technologies including programmable cell-based “devices” that probe and modulate immune responses in a patient- and disease-specific fashion. Applications include new treatments for cancer, programmable smart vaccines, and new gene therapy platforms. The Leonard group is advancing the frontiers of design-based medicine to address unmet medical needs and improve both quantity and quality of life. Dr. Leonard is recipient of an NIH Cancer Research Training Award, the 3M Non-tenured Faculty Award, the Clarence Ver Steen Graduate Faculty Award for Excellence in Graduate Student Mentoring, and has testified as an expert witness before the U.S. House of Representatives on “21st Century Biology.” He also co-directs a graduate cluster in Biotechnology, Systems, and Synthetic Biology and founded Northwestern’s international Genetically Engineered Machines (iGEM) team.
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Niall Mangan
Assistant Professor of Engineering Sciences and Applied Mathematics
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Niall Mangan is an assistant professor of engineering sciences and applied mathematics at Northwestern University. Niall received a duel B.S. in mathematics and physics from Clarkson University in Potsdam, NY, and her Ph.D. in systems biology from Harvard University in Cambridge, MA. Starting in 2013, she was a postdoctoral associate in the Buonassisi Photovoltaics Lab at Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge, MA. In 2016, she became an acting assistant professor in applied mathematics at the University of Washington in Seattle, WA, and a summer research associate with the Institute for Disease Modeling in Bellevue, WA. In 2018, Niall started her research group at Northwestern. Her group focuses on biological and physical modeling and data-driven methods for model identification, parameter fitting, and systems design. The group's mathematical work sits at the intersection of dynamical systems, statistics, optimization, and physical modeling. The group works closely with experimental collaborators to develop models for complex systems such as metabolic and regulatory systems and to further understand how different mechanisms interact and provide engineering design rules. Niall has long been interested in alternative energy development, sustainability, and how spatial organization and temporal organization can be used to enhance biochemical production.
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Milan Mrksich
Vice President for Research; Henry Wade Rogers Professor of Biomedical Engineering; Professor of Chemistry; Professor of Cell and Developmental Biology
847-467-0472
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Milan Mrksich is the Vice President for Research and Henry Wade Rogers Professor with appointments in the Departments of Biomedical Engineering, Chemistry, and Cell & Developmental Biology at Northwestern University. He received his PhD in 1994 from Caltech and then completed postdoctoral studies as American Cancer Society Fellow at Harvard University. Dr. Mrksich’s lab is a leader in developing materials that enable discovery and problem-solving in the life sciences. He has developed surface chemistries that mimic the extracellular matrix and has used these to discover ligands that mediate adhesion and signaling in adherent cells and that provide opportunities for integrating the functions of cells with materials. He has also developed the SAMDI mass spectrometry method that allows high throughput characterization of enzyme function, and has commercialized that technology to support drug development. His lab focuses on evaluating large numbers of enzyme systems to identify and optimize those that can efficiently produce target molecules of interest. Dr. Mrksich has published more than 200 manuscripts, was appointed as an HHMI Investigator, and is the recipient of the Searle Scholar Award, the ACS Cope Scholar Award, the TR100 Young Innovator Award, the Sloan Award, and the Camille-Dreyfus Teacher-Scholar Award.
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Monica Olvera de la Cruz
Lawyer Taylor Professor of Materials Science and Engineering, Chemistry and (by courtesy) Chemical and Biological Engineering, Physics and Astronomy; Director, Center for Computation & Theory of Soft Materials; Deputy Director, Center for Bio-Inspired Energy Science
847-491-7801
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Arthur Prindle
Assistant Professor of Chemical and Biological Engineering and (by courtesy) Biomedical Engineering; Assistant Professor of Biochemistry and Molecular Genetics
312-503-4344
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Arthur Prindle is an Assistant Professor of Biochemistry & Molecular Genetics in the Feinberg School of Medice, Northwestern University. Dr. Prindle received his BS in Chemical Engineering from the California Institute of Technology and a PhD in Bioengineering from the University of California, San Diego, during which time he also pursued projects at the Koch Institute at MIT. His honors include a CASI fellowship from the Burroughs Wellcome Fund and the Aspen Center for Physics Travel Award. He is currently a Simons Foundation fellow of the Helen Hay Whitney Foundation. His research interests are focused in understanding the principles behind how bacteria communicate within biofilm communities.
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Gabriel Rocklin is an Assistant Professor of Pharmacology in the Feinberg School of Medicine, Northwestern University. Gabe received his B.A. in Biology-Chemistry and History from Claremont McKenna College, and his Ph.D. in Biophysics from the University of California, San Francisco. At UCSF, he studied protein-ligand binding affinity prediction with Ken Dill and Brian Shoichet. Gabe then pursued postdoctoral studies in protein design with David Baker at the University of Washington, where he was a Merck Fellow of the Life Sciences Research Foundation. His mixed computational/experimental lab develops high-throughput methods for protein biophysics and protein design, with a focus on designing protein therapeutics. Key questions include: How do protein sequence and structure determine folding stability, conformational dynamics, binding affinity, and other protein properties? Can we quantitatively predict these protein "phenotypes" from genotype (sequence) using computational modeling? And how do we design protein therapeutics that optimize these phenotypes? Gabe’s lab is a member of the international Rosetta Commons and contributes to Rosetta software development.
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Amy C. Rosenzweig is the Weinberg Family Distinguished Professor of Life Sciences. Her research group is focused on understanding metalloprotein function on the molecular level, using interdisciplinary approaches to attack problems at the forefront of bioinorganic chemistry. Rosenzweig’s specific areas of interest include biological methane oxidation, oxygen activation by metalloenzymes, metal uptake and transport, and natural products biosynthesis. She is widely recognized as the world expert on particulate methane monooxygenase, an integral membrane metalloenzyme that converts methane, the most inert hydrocarbon, to methanol. This reaction has significant implications for catalysis, global warming, and bioremediation. Rosenzweig’s accomplishments have been recognized by the American Chemical Society Alfred Bader Award in Bioinorganic or Bioorganic Chemistry, election to the National Academy of Sciences, election to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the Royal Society of Chemistry Joseph Chatt Award, an Honorary Degree from Amherst College, a MacArthur Fellowship, a Camille Dreyfus Teacher-Scholar Award, and a David and Lucile Packard Fellowship. Rosenzweig received a B.A. in Chemistry from Amherst College, a Ph.D. in Inorganic Chemistry from Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and joined the faculty of Northwestern in 1997 afterpostdoctoral work at Harvard Medical School and Dana Farber Cancer Institute.
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Keith Tyo
Associate Professor of Chemical and Biological Engineering
847-868-0319
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Keith E.J. Tyo is assistant professor of chemical and biological engineering at Northwestern University. Keith received his PhD from Massachusetts Institute of Technology and was an NIH National Research Service Award Postdoctoral Fellow at Chalmers University, Sweden. At Northwestern, Keith co-directs the Recombinant Protein Production Core Facility and has launched the Global Health and Sustainability Biotechnologies certificate in the Masters of Biotechnology Program (MBP). Keith’s research interests are at the intersection of synthetic biology and global health. Working toward low cost healthcare diagnostics, the Tyo lab has developed a platform to enable microbes to detect important clinical biomarkers. His group aims to enable cell-based distributed diagnostics that could allow for much better diagnosis and treatment for HIV, TB, and malaria in impoverished, rural settings. To reduce the cost of drug synthesis, his group engineers microbes to produce non-natural drugs (at a reduced cost to chemical synthesis). Keith’s work has appeared in Science, Nature Biotechnology, BMC Biology, and other publications. Keith has received many accolades, including the National Science Foundation CAREER award, the Institute for Sustainability and the Environment at Northwestern Early Career award, and the National Institutes of Health Transformative Research Award.
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Sera Young
Associate Professor, Anthropology & Global Health
847-467-2174
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Sera Young is an Associate Professor of Anthropology and Global Health at Northwestern University. She received her BA in Anthropology at the University of Michigan, MA in Medical Anthropology at the University of Amsterdam, and her PhD in Nutritional Anthropology at Cornell University. Sera's research focuses on food insecurity during pregnancy and early childhood as well as understanding how mothers operate in low-resource settings in order to preserve their health and that of their family. She has led in the development of Water InSecurity Experience (WISE) Scales, tools to quantify household- and individual-level experiences with water insecurity.
Sera's work has been supported by the National Institutes of Health, National Science Foundation, McKnight Foundation, Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, and Wenner Gren Foundation. Sera's recent accolades include the Norman Kretchmer Memorial Award in Nutrition and Development, an Andrew Carnegie Fellowship, and the Margaret Mead Award for her book about pica (non-food cravings) entitled Craving Earth.
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External Faculty
Neda Bagheri
Adjunct Associate Professor of Chemical and Biological Engineering
Neda Bagheri directs the Modeling Dynamic Life Systems (MoDyLS) Lab at the University of Washington Seattle and is a senior advisory scientist at the Allen Institute for Cell Science. She is currently an associate adjunct professor in Chemical and Biological Engineering at Northwestern University. She employs machine learning, dynamical systems, and agent-based modeling strategies to explain unique biological observations. Her background in control theory drives her interest to identify and design interventions that promote designed cellular decisions and cell populations outcomes. Her interdisciplinary projects work to elucidate, predict and ultimately control biological response, particularly in context of disease. Neda Bagheri is a Washington Research Foundation Distinguished Investigator and earned the Senior Moulton Medal by the Institution of Chemical Engineers in 2020. She received a National Science Foundation CAREER Award in 2017 and is recognized nationally and internationally for her leadership and service in the interdisciplinary field of computational, systems, and synthetic biology.
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