October 2017

Robert Pantazes, PhD, is an assistant professor of chemical engineering at Auburn Univ. (Email: rjp0029@auburn.edu). His research group focuses on combining computational and experimental methods to design and identify therapeutic proteins, with an emphasis on rapidly designing high-affinity binding proteins and comprehensively characterizing epitope repertoires. He received his BS and PhD in chemical engineering at Pennsylvania State Univ. under the supervision of Costas Maranas, researching computational protein engineering. He completed his...Read more

Kristala L.J. Prather is the Arthur D. Little Professor in and Executive Officer of the Department of Chemical Engineering at MIT. She received an S.B. degree from MIT in 1994 and Ph.D. from the University of California, Berkeley (1999), and worked 4 years in BioProcess Research and Development at the Merck Research Labs prior to joining MIT. Her research interests are centered on the design and assembly of recombinant microorganisms for the production of small molecules, with additional efforts in novel bioprocess design approaches. A particular focus is the elucidation of design...Read more

Yvonne Y. Chen, PhD, is an assistant professor in the Dept. of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering at the Univ. of California, Los Angeles (Email: yvchen@ucla.edu). Her laboratory focuses on applying synthetic biology and biomolecular engineering techniques to the development of novel mammalian cell systems, particularly for cell-based cancer immunotherapy. She received a BS from Stanford Univ. and a PhD from the California Institute of Technology, both in chemical engineering. She was a Junior Fellow at Harvard Univ. and has been a recipient of the...Read more

Christopher M. Jewell is the Minta Martin Professor of Engineering in the Fischell Department of Bioengineering and a Research Biologist with the United States Department of Veterans Affairs. Dr. Jewell is also the Miegunyah Distinguished Visiting Fellow at the Peter Doherty Institute for Infection & Immunity during 2021. Jewell previously served as the Associate Chair for Research and the Director of the BioWorkshop Core Instrumentation Facility. Dr. Jewell graduated from Lehigh University with high honors in 2003 with a B.S. in Chemical Engineering and a B.S. in Molecular Biology. He...Read more