bearded postdoctoral fellow in blue shirt with blue and gray striped background

Avery Noonan

/in , , , /by

Avery is a postdoctoral researcher in the Environmental Genomics & Systems Biology Division at LBNL. Avery completed his BSc at the University of Toronto in Genetics and Geosciences in 2015 and his PhD at the University of British Columbia in the Genome Sciences and Technology program in 2023. His doctoral research related to the development of high-throughput screening paradigms for the study of photosynthetic microorganisms, as well as the application of computational tools to investigate microbial community structure and dynamics in natural and engineered environments, including photobioreactors and the human lung. In his role in the Arkin lab, Avery is using statistical and machine learning approaches to predict phage-host interactions with the goal of selecting or engineering phages to target specific human pathogens.

Vivek Mutalik

Vivek Mutalik

/in , , /by

Dr. Mutalik is a research scientist at Environmental Genomics and Systems Biology Division, Functional genomics Department, and Biological Systems and Engineering Division, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, Berkeley, CA, USA. Dr. Mutalik works in the area of synthetic biology and functional genomics of diverse microbes and phages. Dr. Mutalik is currently working towards establishing Berkeley Phage Foundry, a unified facility for engineering phages and phage-like particles for diverse applications within Innovative Genomics Institute, Berkeley. Previously, Dr. Mutalik lead the BIOFAB project, the world’s first biological design-build facility in Emeryville, CA, funded by NSF. Dr. Mutalik received his PhD in Chemical engineering from the Indian Institute of Technology Bombay, India and was a Postdoctoral Fellow in Prof Carol Gross at University of California, San Francisco. Dr. Mutalik has three years of experience in the Biotechnology Industry in handling more than hundred kiloliter industrial fermentation units, bulk drug manufacturing and resource management. He has recently cofounded Felix Biotechnology, focused on accelerating the deployment of novel biotherapeutics targeting urgent microbial challenges in human health and beyond.