I am a post-doctoral researcher in the De Novo Synthetic Biology Lab at I2SysBio and Portfolio Manager of the PhotosynH2 consortium. I have a PhD in Synthetic Biology from the University of Edinburgh, UK, where I manipulated the glycogen pathway of E. coli to better understand polysaccharide synthesis, to improve yields for food and biofuel production. I also have post-doctoral experience from the Synthetic Biology laboratory at the University of Exeter, UK, where I created a genetic toolkit for Cas9-mediated genetic engineering in a normally non-permissive bacterial host, and the Centro de Astrobiologia in Madrid, Spain, where I created a genetic relay to screen a metagenomic library using microfluidics. I also investigated hyperhalophilic microbial communities using metagenomics and metatrascriptomics, while developing techniques to genetically manipulate a hyper-halophilic bacterium. I am motivated in my work by the potential for synthetic biology to help solve some of the bigger problems of the world.
