Our team seeks to integrate the governing principles of rational design with fundamental concepts from material science, synthetic chemistry, and stem cell biology to conceptualize, create, and exploit next-generation materials to address a variety of health-related problems. We are currently interested in the development of user-programmable biomaterials for assaying dynamic stem cell fate and tissue engineering applications, controlled therapeutic delivery to combat disease, and new tools for enhanced proteomic studies. Our work relies heavily on the utilization of cytocompatible bioorthogonal chemistries, several of which can be initiated with light, to control material properties on the molecular level. Read More
Our goal is to develop design platforms for engineering complex genetic control systems for fundamental and applied synthetic biology. In our work, we combine computational modeling, in vitro selection and genetic engineering to construct RNA-based systems that can process cellular information and program the expression levels of large numbers of genes. Our aim is to enable both better understanding of fundamental biological processes and applications to meet demands for renewable chemicals and new therapies. Read More