Hira Panna Lesea

/in , /by

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

/in , /by

Xiaohan Zhu is a first-year graduate student in the UC Berkeley Biophysics program. She is interested in microbial community assembly and conducts relevant research in the Arkin lab for
her first rotation. She is mentored by Dr. Bradley Bigg during her rotation here. In her free time, she loves outdoor activities and badminton.

Manoshi Sen Datta

/in , /by
Manoshi is a computational microbial ecologist interested in harnessing the power of microbial consortia for sustainability.  During her academic training, Manoshi explored how microscale eco-evolutionary dynamics in wild microbial ecosystems drive ecosystem-level properties. She employed a variety of approaches, including novel experimental model systems (with Otto Cordero), mathematical modeling of laboratory ecosystems (with Jeff Gore), and comparative genomics of wild bacteria (with Martin Polz and Roy Kishony).  Manoshi then joined Boost Biomes, an agtech start-up, where she developed data science approaches to accelerate microbial interaction discovery in complex soil communities.  In the Arkin Lab, she aims to combine her expertise in computational genomics and data science to design synthetic microbial consortia for bioremediation of nitrate and heavy metals.

Isra Raza

/in , /by

Isra is a rising senior undergraduate at UC Berkeley in Environmental Sciences. She is working 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.

2022 Min Kim

Min Kim

/in , /by

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 Stockard picture

Riley Stockard

/in , /by

Riley is a first year graduate student in the UC Berkeley/UCSF Bioengineering program and conducts research in the Arkin lab for her third lab rotation.  She is mentored by Yolanda Huang, a postdoc in the Arkin lab, to help develop barcoding and functional genomic libraries.

HouShuwen

Shuwen Hou

/in , /by

Shuwen Hou is a third-year undergraduate student at the University of Hong Kong
(HKU) studying biochemistry. She is attending UC Berkeley for an exchange study.
Shuwen works with Dr. Fangchao Song to profile the microbial physiology in
different conditions through droplet-based microfluidics. This is part of the ENIGMA
project.

2021 Cameron Hearne photo

Cameron Hearne

/in , , /by

Cameron is a graduate student in Plant & Microbial Biology Dept and jointly advised by Drs. Mutalik and Arkin

2021 Bradley Biggs photo

Bradley Biggs

/in , , /by

Bradley completed his B.S. in Chemical Engineering at the University of Southern California, where he worked on silicon-based optical biosensors. As his research interests evolved, he pursued an M.S. in Biotechnology at Northwestern University, and subsequently worked for a time at a metabolic engineering startup based in Cambridge, MA called Manus Bio. He later returned to Northwestern University to pursue his Ph.D. in Chemical Engineering working with advisor Keith Tyo in synthetic biology and metabolic engineering, with his thesis work focusing on engineering the soil bacterium Acinetobacter baylyi for applications in lignin upgrading. In the Arkin Lab, Bradley’s work focuses on integrating synthetic biology and systems biology approaches to the ENIGMA project, continuing to explore soil bacterium and their relevance to engineering applications and the environment.

2021 Joshua Jiaqi Huang photo

Jiaqi (Joshua) Huang

/in , , /by

Joshua is a graduate student in the Dept. Comparative Biochemistry. He is working with Dr. Ruoshi Yuan on the time-lapse imaging project.