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  • Hadley Sikes

    Assistant Professor of Chemical Engineering
    Sikes Lab
    sikes@mit.edu
    617.253.5224
    Short Bio

    Our efforts focus on engineering biomolecular systems to detect and treat disease in new ways.  We use the principles of engineering design to support and extend the practice of evidence-based diagnosis and selection of therapy.

    Engineering design starts with interviewing intended users to formulate a quantitative problem statement and to understand the context and constraints for a new medical test. In the area of infectious disease, proteins in bodily fluids can indicate malaria or tuberculosis. The protein identity, quantity, and bodily fluid varies with the disease. In cancer, particular epigenetic and post-translational protein modifications can predict which therapies are likely to be effective against an individual tumor. We use an understanding of thermodynamics, kinetics, and transport phenomena to design medical tests that simultaneously meet design criteria for analytical performance, assay time, cost, robustness, and infrastructural requirements. We iteratively test prototypes with clinical collaborators to assess and improve real-world utility.

  • Katharina Ribbeck

    Eugene Bell Career Development Professor of Tissue Engineering
    Ribbeck Lab
    MIT Biological Engineering
    ribbeck@mit.edu
    617-715-4575
    Short Bio

    The Laboratory for Biological Hydrogels’ focus is on basic mechanisms by which mucus barriers exclude, or allow passage of different molecules and pathogens, and the mechanisms pathogens have evolved to penetrate mucus barriers. It hopes to provide the foundation for a theoretical framework that captures general principles governing selectivity in mucus, and likely other biological hydrogels such as the extracellular matrix, and bacterial biofilms. The Lab’s work may also be the basis for the reconstitution of synthetic gels that mimic the basic selective properties of biological gels.

  • Kristala L. Jones Prather

    Associate Professor of Chemical Engineering; Arthur Dehon Little Professor, Department Executive Officer
    Prather Research Group
    kljp@mit.edu
    617-253-1950
    Short Bio

    Chemical engineering is the perfect backdrop for our research. We engineer microbes to produce chemical compounds. Some may look at this and think biology, but if you were able to peer inside a cell, you’d witness thousands of chemical reactions inside a microbial chemical factory.

  • Elizabeth Nolan

    Associate Professor of Chemistry
    Nolan Lab
    lnolan@mit.edu
    617-452-2495
    Short Bio

    Liz Nolan was raised in Niskayuna, New York and graduated magna cum laude from Smith College with highest honors in chemistry and a minor in music. Liz conducted her graduate studies in inorganic chemistry at MIT where she joined the laboratory of Professor Stephen J. Lippard and she pursued post-doctoral research in the laboratory of Christopher T. Walsh at Harvard Medical School. Liz joined the Department of Chemistry at MIT as an Assistant Professor in 2009 and was promoted to Associate Professor Without Tenure in 2014, Associate Professor with Tenure in 2016, and Professor with Tenure in 2019. She was selected as the Ivan R. Cottrell Professor of Immunology in 2020. Liz received a 2010 NIH New Innovator Award, a 2014 NSF CAREER Award, and was named a Searle Scholar in 2011, an Alfred P. Sloan Foundation Fellow in 2013, and a Camille Dreyfus Teacher-Scholar in 2014. She is the recipient of the 2016 Eli Lilly Award in Biological Chemistry and a 2017 Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers (PECASE). For her contributions as an educator, Liz was awarded the 2016 MIT School of Science Teaching Prize for Graduate Education. In 2020, Liz began serving as the Associate Department Head overseeing the Department of Chemistry’s educational mission.

  • Jacquin Niles

    Professor of Biological Engineering; Co-Director MIT Microbiology PhD Program
    Niles Lab
    jcniles@mit.edu
    617-324-3701
    Short Bio

    Our research emphasizes developing and using novel molecular tools to address outstanding questions in infectious diseases. Our specific focus is on malaria and the causative pathogen, Plasmodium falciparum. We take advantage of model systems to efficiently validate and optimize the design of new tools intended to address unmet needs in our target pathogen. In this process, we simultaneously produce solutions that are applicable across a range of model and pathogenic organisms, and broadly useful in both basic and applied biology efforts.

    We are highly multi-disciplinary in our approach, and integrate expertise in diverse areas including: biomolecular engineering; chemical biology; synthetic biology; analytical chemistry; biochemistry; and molecular and cell biology.

  • Leonid Mirny

    Associate Professor of Health Sciences and Technology and Physics
    Mirny Lab
    leonid@mit.edu
    617-452-4862
    Short Bio

    The challenge of understanding biological systems from first physical principles is what motivates our research. Biological systems are characterized by remarkable structural complexity at all levels of organization. However, we believe that simple physical models are valuable for describing these systems.

    Our laboratory develops multidisciplinary approaches involving:

    • Polymer physics theory and simulation
    • Statistical interpretation of genome-wide data
    • Population genetics and evolutionary theory

    A key feature of our approach are the direct collaborations we have with other scientists in the area.

    A number of graduate students in the lab are co-advised by an experimentalist.

    Nearly every student in the lab works directly with our experimental collaborators, contributing both to experimental design, data analysis, and modeling.

  • Darcy McRose

    Assistant Professor
    McRose Lab
    dmcrose@mit.edu
    617-715-4244
    Short Bio

    Our research group is interested in understanding how small scale microbially-mediated chemical transformations in soils and sediments affect biogeochemistry and plant growth. We focus specifically on the chemical tools or “secondary metabolites” that microbes (and plants) use to navigate and alter their environment. While we have learned a great deal about the antibiotic properties of secondary metabolites and their utility in human health, we know significantly less about secondary metabolite function in natural contexts. This knowledge gap creates a unique opportunity: secondary metabolites are highly tractable study targets and while they do not encompass the whole of soil complexity, they epitomize many crucial aspects.

    We are particularly interested in secondary metabolites that are redox active and/or bind metals as these chemical properties can contribute to weathering and nutrient turnover in natural contexts. Our work incorporates bacterial genetics, genomics, and physiology as well as mass spectrometry and other geochemical measurements. Carbon storage and agricultural sustainability are two of the ultimate motivations for our work. Specific projects investigating macronutrient cycling via secondary metabolites are described below.

  • Scott Manalis

    Professor of Biological and Mechanical Engineering
    Manalis Lab
    srm@mit.edu
    617-253-5039
    Short Bio

    Scott Manalis is the David H. Koch Professor in Engineering and member of the Koch Institute for Integrative Cancer Research at MIT. He received a B.S. in physics from the University of California, Santa Barbara and a Ph.D. in applied physics from Stanford University. His lab develops and applies high precision approaches for measuring biophysical properties of single cells.

  • J. Christopher Love

    Associate Professor of Chemical Engineering
    Koch Institute
    clove@mit.edu
    617-324-2300
    Short Bio

    The Love Laboratory seeks to advance the discovery and development of new therapeutics using patient-centric, data-driven approaches. Using a suite of technologies for single-cell analysis pioneered by the lab over the last decade, we aim to resolve essential cells involved in the evolution of diseases like cancer and food allergy, as well as those that may offer beneficial protection through interventions like therapies or vaccines. We also aim to accelerate the development and accessibility of biopharmaceuticals and vaccines for patients globally. Our lab is creating integrated holistic approaches to the development and manufacturing of these biologics with the aim of testing new medicines rapidly and ensuring accessibility to new and existing medicines through innovations in manufacturing. Using a combination of principles from chemical engineering and biological engineering including state-of-the-art tools for genome editing and RNA sequencing, we are advancing the breadth of products through molecular and host engineering as well as concepts in integrated process design.

  • Sebastian Lourido

    Associate Professor of Biology; Core Member, Whitehead Institute
    MIT Biology
    lourido@wi.mit.edu
    617-324-4920
    Short Bio

    Our lab is interested in the molecular events that enable apicomplexan parasites to remain widespread and deadly infectious agents. We study many important human pathogens, including Toxoplasma gondii, to model features conserved throughout the phylum. We seek to expand our understanding of eukaryotic diversity and identify specific features that can be targeted to treat parasite infections.