Weston Whitaker

Weston Whitaker is a research scientist at Stanford University in the Microbiology and Immunology Department. He is interested in genetically engineering gut commensals to probe gut ecology, investigate host-microbiome interactions, and develop genetically engineered microbial therapeutics. He earned a B.S. in Biomedical Engineering from Columbia and a Ph.D. in Bioengineering from UC Berkeley, training with Adam Arkin and John Dueber. As a postdoctoral fellow in Justin Sonnenburg’s lab at Stanford, he developed genetic tools for Bacteroides and co-founded Novome Biotechnologies to translate this work, advancing an engineered strain and a paired-prebiotic control strategy into human studies.