2026 Central US Synthetic Biology Workshop
Program

Agenda:

Thursday, October 8 (DAY 1)

8:00 AM Registration & Continental Breakfast
8:50 AM Welcome by Workshop Chairs: Joff Silberg and Caleb Bashor (Rice University)
Session 1 – Advances in computational design and theory
(Chair: Joff Silberg, Rice U)
9:00 AM Huimin Zhao (UIUC)
“KEYNOTE: Biology by Design: From Directed Evolution to Autonomous Experimentation”
9:45 AM Linna An (Rice University)
"Machine learning based functional protein design”
10:10 AM Niall Mangan (Northwestern University)
“Building dynamic systems models directly from time-series data”
10:35 AM Morning Coffee Break (set up posters)
Session 2 – Innovations and emerging tools
(Chair: Sheel Dodani, UT Dallas)
11:00 AM Julius Lucks (Northwestern University)
“Engineering Biology Across Scales: New Curricula for the Next Generation of Synthetic Biologists”
11:35 AM Pallavi Ramaswamy (ORNL)
“Direct Conversion of Metabolites to Volatile Readouts for In Situ Analysis in Soils Using an AI-Assisted Enzyme Discovery Pipeline”
11:50 AM Devon Kulhanek (Rice University)
“Engineering a bright near-infrared fluorescent protein by screening a comprehensive phenotypic landscape”
12:05 PM Ella Ramamurthy (Rice University)
“High-throughput engineering of ligand-activated splicing ribozyme through domain insertion for broad-host range inducible control, genetic recordings, and biosensing”
12:20 PM Lunch with activity: education challenges & opportunities
1:20 PM Report out on lunch discussions
Session 3 – Microbiomes, phage, and plants
(Chair: Chelsea Hu, Texas A&M)
1:50 PM Xiaoxia (Nina) Lin (University of Michigan)
“Microdroplet Enabled High-Throughput Cultivation, Dissection, and Screening of Microbial Communities”
2:15 PM Bjorn Shockey (Rice University)
"Increasing the taxonomic resolution of gene transfer measurements in microbial communities”
2:30 PM Christopher D. Johnston (MD Anderson Cancer Center)
“Rational Design of Genetic Systems for Non-Model Microbes of Clinical and Biotechnological Relevance”
2:55 PM Ashley Hall (BiomEdit)
“Lactobacillus-vectored nanobodies improve broiler chicken productivity under sub-clinical necrotic enteritis with associated microbiome and transcriptome changes”
3:20 PM Laura Casas Ferrer (Georgia Tech)
“Building Oil Bodies from Scratch: Synthetic Organelles for Engineering Climate-Resilient Crops”
3:35 PM Charilaos Giannitsis (Rice University)
“Many behaviors, one regulator: The phenotypic landscape of a single transcription factor”
4:00 PM Poster Session (4:00 PM - 6:00 PM)

Friday, October 9 (DAY 2)

8:00 AM Registration & Continental Breakfast
Session 4 – Biomanufacturing and bioelectronics
(Chair: Keith Keitz, UT Austin)
9:00 AM Danielle Tullman-Ercek (Northwestern University)
“KEYNOTE: Nanoarchitecture: Engineering protein superstructures for people and planet ”
9:45 AM Jeff Gralnick (University of Minnesota)
“Engineering Electroactive Bacterial Communities”
10:10 AM Group Photo and Morning Coffee Break
Session 5 – Biomanufacturing, sensors, and materials
(Chair: Ross Thyer, Rice U)
10:45 AM Andy Ellington (UT Austin)
“Directed Evolution and Machine Learning for Optimization of Rare Earth Element Sensors”
11:10 AM Chris Snow (Colorado State)
“Engineering modular protein-DNA scaffold crystals for rapid structure elucidation of transcription factors”
11:35 AM Yuheng Lin (University of Houston)
“Synthetic Biology for Psychiatric Therapeutics: Engineered Microbial Synthesis of Psilocybin”
12:00 PM Lunch with activity: infrastructure challenges & opportunities
1:00 PM Report out on lunch discussions
Session 6 – Biomedicine and human diseases
(Chair: Pat Cirino, University of Houston)
1:30 PM Paul de Figueiredo (University of Missouri)
“Microbial Medicines for Addressing Human Disease”
2:05 PM Glenna Wink Foight (Baylor College of Medicine)
“Invited Speaker: Dynamic sensing of intracellular signaling with engineered transcription factors in T cells”
2:30 PM Dave Dingal (UT Dallas)
“Sequence-specific activation of animal embryonic signaling using a synthetic protease library”
2:45 PM Afternoon Coffee Break (take down posters)
Session 7 – Biomedicine and human disease
(Chair: Caleb Bashor, Rice U)
3:15 PM Yeonhwee Jeong (Texas A&M)
“Domesticating Brucella melitensis ΔvjbR for Living Bacterial Immunotherapy”
3:30 PM Francois St Pierre (Baylor College of Medicine)
“From Design to Deployment: Engineering Fluorescent Biosensors of Neural Electrical Activity”
3:55 PM Douglas Chang (UT Austin)
“Host-cell toxicity is a predictable and addressable failure mode in de novo protein binder design”
4:10 PM Wrap-up with Poster Prizes