Mindy Duong, undergraduate at UC Berkeley studied Molecular & Cell Biology and Public Health. She joined the Arkin Lab as a student laboratory assistant to help with routine upkeep of the entire lab and assist individual researchers with their research projects. In her free time, she enjoys crocheting and learning other fiber arts.
Haoming a student at Wuhan University studying Life Sciences and Finance. An exchange student at UC Berkeley and worked with Ruoshi Yuan to develop high throughput platforms to study C.necator in low nutrition conditions. Skilled in microfluidic chips design and fabrication and interested in understanding biological processes in economic terms.
Dr. Seunghyun Ryu is currently a Research Assistant Professor in The Department of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering at The University of Tennessee, Knoxville (UTK). She earned a BS degree in Chemical Engineering and Biotechnology at Ajou University in South Korea, a MA degree in Biochemistry at Korea University and Korea Institute of Science and Technology (KIST) in South Korea, and a PhD degree in Chemical Engineering from Texas Tech University with Prof. M Nazmul Karim. After her PhD, she worked as a postdoctoral scholar with Prof. Nils Kröger at Georgia Institute of Technology and later joined Trinh lab at UTK as a postdoctoral researcher and then a research scientist. Before returning to UTK as a Research Assistant Professor, Dr. Ryu worked as a research scientist at CJ America. She was a visiting scholar in Prof. Arkin’s laboratory at The University of California, Berkeley in 2022. Her research interests are in the areas of protein engineering, metabolic engineering, and synthetic biology. Dr. Ryu has research expertise in protein and strain engineering, and has experience working with bacteria, yeast, diatom, and mammalian cell lines including non-model organisms. In addition to performing research, Dr. Ryu also serves as a project manager in Trinh lab for DOE and industry-funded projects.
Professor Trinh is currently a Ferguson Faculty Fellow in The Department of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering at The University of Tennessee Knoxville. He earned his PhD in chemical engineering from The University of Minnesota-Twin Cities under guidance of Prof. Friedrich Srienc. He then worked as a postdoctoral scholar with Profs. Douglas Clark and Harvey Blanch at The University of California, Berkeley. In Spring 2023, Prof. Trinh is a visiting scholar in Prof. Arkin’s laboratory at The University of California, Berkeley. Trinh’s research interests are in areas of systems and synthetic biology, metabolic engineering, biochemical engineering, microbial and viral physiology. His research aims to fundamentally understand complex cellular systems and develop novel experimental and computational tools to control these systems for biotechnological applications with 3 research thrusts. Thrust 1 is to develop a transformative technology, MODCELL (Modular Cell), to engineer modular (chassis) cells for rapid development of novel microbial biocatalysts for industrial biocatalysis. Thrust 2 is to develop a transformative ViPaRe (Virulent Pathogen Resistance) technology to effectively combat rapidly evolving and resistant pathogens. Thrust 3 is to understand mechanisms of cellular robustness against environmental and genetic perturbations and develop effective defensive tools to boost cellular robustness for applications from disease prevention to novel biocatalysis. Trinh serves as a PI of several single and collaborative funded projects including the NSF CAREER award for development of the MODCELL technology and the DARPA’s FYA and Director Fellowship for development of the ViPaRe technology. He is an active member of AIChE, SBE, ACS, SIMB, and IMES.
Google scholar: https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=1GZXQDEAAAAJ&hl=en&oi=ao
Yihao is a first year undergraduate student at UC Berkeley studying Molecular Cell Biology. He is working with Jiaqi Huang on the C. necator imaging project. Through his work at this lab, Yihao is interested in exploring investigating diversity generating mechanisms in bacterial isolates.
Jasmine, an undergraduate bioengineering major at UC Berkeley. She worked with Dr. Bradley Biggs using genomic fragments to analyze the function of particular bacterial enzymes. This involves genetic recombination and cultivation of bacteria to study the observed behavior 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 function of the microbial communities.
Sofia Milian, an undergraduate student attended Berkeley City College (BCC). Works on ENIGMA project assisting the researchers in the preparation of material. Graduated from BCC in the fall of 2023 then transfered to a four-year university, to pursue career in BioTechnology
Adam Arkin is the Dean A. Richard Newton Memorial Professor in the Department of Bioengineering at the University of California, Berkeley and Senior Faculty Scientist at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. He and his laboratory develop experimental and computational technologies for discovery, prediction, control and design of microbial and viral functions and behaviors in environmental contexts.
He is the chief scientist of the Department of Energy Scientific Focus Area, ENIGMA(Ecosystems and Networks Integrated with Genes and Molecular Assemblies, http://enigma.lbl.gov), designed to understand, at a molecular level, the impact of microbial communities on their ecosystems with specific focus on terrestrial communities in contaminated watersheds. He also directs the Department of Energy Systems Biology Knowledgebase (KBase) program: (http://kbase.us) an open platform for comparative functional genomics, systems and synthetic biology for microbes, plants and their communities, and for sharing results and methods with other scientists. He is director of the newly announced Center for Utilization of Biological Engineering in Space which seeks microbial and plant-based biological solutions for in situ resource utilization that reduce the launch mass and improves reliability and quality of food, pharmaceuticals, fuels and materials for astronauts on a mission to Mars. Finally, he is the Co-Director of the Berkeley Synthetic Biology Institute, which brings together U.C. Berkeley and Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory Scientists with Industry Partners to forward technology and applications for sustainable biomanufacturing.
