Author: allisn3

Profile picture of allisn3

Posts by allisn3

Dr. Jorge Marchand receives NIH funding to grow the “biocatalytic toolkit” for therapeutics

Posted on

July 22, 2026 | UW Chemical Engineering

Dr. Jorge Marchand, MolES faculty member and assistant professor in the Department of Chemical Engineering, has received the prestigious Maximizing Investigator’s Research Award (MIRA) from the National Institutes of Health (NIH). Designed to provide highly talented and promising investigators with stable funding,  this five-year grant will support Dr. Marchand’s research on the biosynthesis, discovery and biocatalytic production of natural products. Read the full announcement.

Read More

UW’s ISCRM–MolES Pilot Awards fuel cross-disciplinary innovation

Posted on

June 26, 2026

The Institute for Stem Cell and Regenerative Medicine (ISCRM) and Molecular Engineering & Sciences Institute (MolES) awarded two UW faculty-led teams Pilot Fellowship Funding.

“These awards support projects initiated through the 2026 ISCRM-MolES Scientific Exchange and are intended to launch new collaborations between the two institutes to develop technologies that will address the root causes of disease, along with creating new opportunities for trainees,” said Suzie Pun, Washington Research Foundation Professor of Bioengineering and director of MolES. Read More

Celebrating MolES graduates

Posted on

On June 8 in Kane Hall, the UW Molecular Engineering and Sciences Institute (MolES) held a hooding ceremony for eight of our 2025-2026 molecular engineering PhD graduates.  

  
Congratulations, Class of 2025–2026! 
 

Headshot of Gaby Balistreri

Gabrielle Balistreri | Chemical Engineering, Material Science Engineering 
Advised by Elizabeth Nance and Eleftheria Roumeli 

Gabrielle’s thesis, Sustainably Sourced Bacterial Cellulose Nanoparticles for Targeted Drug Delivery, was completed in the winter of 2026.  

Headshot of Samantha Borje

Samantha Borje | Electrical & Computer Engineering 
Advised by Georg Seelig 

Samantha’s thesis, High-throughput Implementation and Clique-based Design:  Scaling DNA circuits from Boolean logic gates to Multi-bit Addition, will be completed in the summer of 2026.   

Read More

MolES honors students with awards for research and service

Posted on

June 12, 2026


The University of Washington’s Institute for Molecular Engineering and Sciences (MolES) recognized outstanding students with its annual MolES Student Awards.  

 
Distinguished Dissertation Awards

Headshot of Gizem Gökçe-Alpkılıç


Gizem Gökçe-Alpkılıç, PhD, advised by Guarav Bhardwaj, was recognized for her exceptional contribution in advancing a research direction at the interface of medicinal chemistry, protein engineering, chemical biology, and artificial intelligence.  
 
“Her work helped establish experimental and computational workflows that are now being used by many other students and researchers in the field,” said Bhardwaj. “The broader impact of Gizem’s innovation is substantial: AI-enabled molecular design has enormous potential, but its progress depends on rigorous experimental validation and high-quality feedback data.”

Read More

Engineering the Future

Posted on

June 11, 2026 | By by Malavika Jagannathan, University Marketing & Communications
Photos credits: Mark Stone and provided by Gizem Gökçe-Alpkılıç

Equipped with her molecular engineering doctorate, recent grad Gizem Gökçe-Alpkılıç is using AI-powered tools to create proteins and solve global challenges, like drug-resistant infection.

As a young child, Gizem Gökçe-Alpkılıç asked her parents for a microscope to allow her to dissect the world around her. She’s still looking at life’s smallest parts today at the UW’s Institute for Protein Design (IPD) — just with a few more sophisticated tools at her disposal.   Read More

2026 MolES Catalyst Awards support collaborative microbial research initiatives  

Posted on

May 27, 2026

Six headshots of award recipients stacked in two rows with text that reads 2026 MolES Catalyst Awards
L to R: Monica Guo, Lauren Rajakovich, Sid Venkatesh, Anna Kuchina, Sean Gibbons and Joshua Elmore
Photos: Institute for Systems Biology, Pacific Northwest National Laboratory and University of Washington

Three University of Washington faculty-led teams received the Molecular Engineering and Sciences Institute’s (MolES’s) 2026 Catalyst Awards. These awards seed new research initiatives and support preliminary data generation. Each team will receive $5,000 in award funding to help launch their collaborative research.

In April, participants in the MolES-sponsored Microbial Engineering Scientific Exchange were invited to collaborate with fellow scientists on microbial engineering research projects and apply for catalyst award funding. Read More

UW research team creates a new type of optical chip

Posted on

A research team led by Arka Majumdar, MolES faculty member and UW Electrical & Computer Engineering (ECE) and Physics professor, has engineered a new type of optical microchip. This programmable photonic integrated circuit was fabricated in the Washington Nanofabrication Facility (WNF) and is low power, electrically reconfigurable, and can be mass-produced. Read more about this chip that has the potential to be applied in a wide range of technologies, including information processing, sensing, imaging, machine learning and artificial intelligence here. Read More

AIMBE Recognizes Leader in Cytometry and Biomedical Engineering: Daniel T. Chiu, Ph.D.

Posted on

May 4, 2026

The American Institute for Medical and Biological Engineering (AIMBE) recently elected Daniel T. Chiu — professor of Bioengineering, Joint A. Bruce Montgomery Professor of Chemistry, and MolES faculty member — to the AIMBE College of Fellows Class of 2026.

Dr. Chiu is recognized for his work in developing nanomaterials that have transformed single-molecule detection — an achievement that speaks to his exceptional leadership and scientific impact. Election to the AIMBE College of Fellows is among the highest professional distinctions accorded to medical and biological engineers, comprised of the top two percent of engineers in these fields.  Read More

NIH-funded team led by Berndt lab aims to supercharge protein sensor engineering

Posted on

April 29, 2026


Congratulations to Berndt lab on receiving an $11 million grant from the National Institutes of Health (NIH) BRAIN Initiative. In an article produced by the Institute for Stem-Cell & Regenerative Medicine (ISCRM) and UW Medicine, learn how MolES faculty members Andre Berndt, associate professor in the Department of Bioengineering, and Doug Fowler, professor in the Department of Genome Sciences, are partnering in a multi‑institution collaboration to enhance protein sensor technology and give scientists improved tools to observe brain activity in real time with even greater precision. Read More