ENIGMA – Page 2 – Arkin Laboratory

Bradley Biggs

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.

Allison Hung

Allison is an NSF fellow and graduate student in Molecular & Cell Biology. She obtained her BA in biology at Columbia University in 2020 while doing research on host-pathogen interactions and cell signaling in the Dietrich and Haeusler labs. As a student in the Arkin Lab, Allison is investigating bacterial colonization mechanisms in the context of the mammalian host gut. In her free time, Allison enjoys doing crosswords and practicing her German.

Josh Huang

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

Paulina Salgado Marshall

Paulina was an undergraduate senior in the Bioengineering Dept. She worked with Dr. Ruoshi Yuan on biomolecular nanotechnology using fluidics and chips. She has gone to work in industry.

Dexter Lai

Dexter worked with Dr. Bradley Biggs on the cloning and testing of genomic fragments into bacterial strains to test for the activity of unknown genes. This work is part of the broader ENIGMA goals of understanding the metagenomic data gathered at the site and improving our ability to move from metagenomic DNA to practical biological function of the microbial communities.

Heloise Carion

Heloise Carion was a fourth year Bioengineering undergraduate student at UC Berkeley with a concentration in synthetic and computational biology. Her interests include genetics, systems biology, and computation. In 2018, she joined the Arkin Laboratory, and has helped develop technology for high-throughput characterization of phage genes.

Ashley Azadeh

As of 2020, Ashley is a Scientist at Roche.

Yasha Ektefaie

As of 2020, Yasha is a PhD student at Harvard Medical School.

Alejandro Ramirez

Alejandro Ramirez was a Bioengineering Research Associate in the Arkin Laboratory at LBNL. He studied bioengineering, concentrating in synthetic biology and systems biology, and metabolic engineering at the University of California, Berkeley. In 2019 he interned at Amyris, Inc. as a fermentation operations associate for tanks sized 250 mL to 2.0 L before starting full-time at Endless West as a production associate in the creation of beverages and food from component chemicals. As his passion was still in synthetic biology, Alejandro returned to work for the Arkin Lab in 2020 joining the ENIGMA project under the supervision of Vivek Mutalik. His interests in science are in sustainable engineering, biological interactions, and genetic tools used in directed-evolution.

Morgan Price

Thanks to cheap DNA sequencing, we are slowly starting to understand the incredible diversity of bacteria. Morgan Price builds computational tools to help us use all this data to understand how diverse bacteria work. This understanding can help us manage our environment, control the bacteria inside us, and develop new biotechnologies.

Principal Investigator