Luz Arias is a sophomore at UC Berkeley studying bioengineering. She is working with Hira Lesea on the ENIGMA project exploring the impact of microorganisms on polluted ecosystems. Outside of the lab, she’s occupied with cooking and skateboarding.
Shekhar obtained his B.Tech and M.Tech in Chemical Engineering from the Indian Institute of Technology, Bombay in 2014. He discovered the joy of research through an internship in computational fluid dynamics, before moving into the field of systems biology with research on modeling the human cholesterol metabolism. After working as a Project Engineer for 9 months on fermentation technology at the DBT-ICT at Mumbai, India, Shekhar started his Ph.D. research at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign in Chemical & Biomolecular Engineering. His doctoral research, in the lab of Huimin Zhao, involved the interdisciplinary application of computational modeling, CRISPR editing and mass spectrometric techniques to design rational strategies for metabolic engineering in yeast. Shekhar joined the Arkin Lab in September 2023 as a postdoctoral researcher with an eye on employing the toolkits of metabolic engineering for improving predictive microbial ecology within the ENIGMA project. Shekhar’s goal is to pursue advances in research that inform strategies for mitigating the adverse effects of anthropogenic climate change. In his spare time, Shekhar volunteers with the Citizen’s Climate Lobby, plays the guitar, goes rock climbing, does some gardening, and tries to catch up to an ever-growing list of books to read.
Hira Panna Lesea is a Research Associate in the Environmental Genomics and Systems Biology Division at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory working on isolating bacteria from groundwater and sediment from Oak Ridge National Laboratory that have been identified as important to the field site’s community function. She is measuring the growth phenotypes of ENIGMA isolates using a high throughput characterization pipeline under conditions relevant to the field site, such as low pH and high nitrate, in addition to providing high quality genomes of the characterized isolates. She is working with the Arkin lab on the ENIGMA project because of her interest in how microbes affect contaminated ecologies and her experience with studying the microbiome of the domestic cat at UC Davis. In addition to her passion for the unseen, she is also a chef and avid music lover.
Xiaohan Zhu a graduate student in the UC Berkeley Biophysics program. She rotated in the Arkin lab researching microbial community assembly. She was mentored by Dr. Bradley Bigg during her rotation.
Isra was an undergraduate at UC Berkeley in Environmental Sciences. She worked with Dr. Bradley Biggs on ENIGMA to conduct research focusing on pairwise microbial interactions under low pH and anaerobic conditions, with aims of applying this to broader biological modeling efforts.
Min is a second year undergraduate student at Berkeley studying bioengineering. She works with Dr. Biggs to characterize enzyme genotypes and functions from metagenomic data based on the iterative workflow that involves parallel sequencing and complementation assay. The project takes isolate level approaches that can be combined with field studies to fill in the gaps in understanding metabolism.
Riley, a graduate student in the UC Berkeley/UCSF Bioengineering program. She researched in the Arkin lab for her third lab rotation. She was mentored by Yolanda Huang, a postdoc in the Arkin lab, to help develop barcoding and functional genomic libraries.
Shuwen Hou was an undergraduate student at the University of Hong Kong (HKU) studying biochemistry. She attended UC Berkeley for an exchange study.
Shuwen worked with Dr. Fangchao Song to profile the microbial physiology in different conditions through droplet-based microfluidics as part of the ENIGMA project.
Cameron is a graduate student in Plant & Microbial Biology Dept and jointly advised by Drs. Mutalik and Arkin
