Category Archives: news

We’re excited to share our recent work developing a nucleic acid sequence-based amplification pathogen diagnostic for SARS-CoV-2, with 20-200 aM sensitivity. We also develop an explanatory model to gain mechanistic insight into reaction performance. Congratulations to Katie, Dr. Kate Dray, and our wonderful collaborators in the Lucks, Jewett, and Mangan groups. Check out the preprint here!

We’re excited to announce our recent work developing a method using flexible HaloTag labeling to absolutely quantify surface protein loading at the individual EV level, providing new insights into EV heterogeneity. An interesting new insight is that existing methods can substantially underestimate surface display. Congratulations to Dr. Roxi Mitrut, Dr. Devin Stranford, and Beth. Check out the paper here!

We’re excited to share our recent collaboration with the Kamat Lab, exploring how lipid-protein interactions may be leveraged to direct proteins into extracellular vesicles. Congratulations Dr. Taylor Gunnels, Dr. Hailey Edelstein, and our excellent collaborators Dr. Justin Peruzzi and Dr. Neha Kamat of the Kamat Lab. Check out the paper here!

We’re excited to share our recent work developing genetically-encoded biosensors for use in red blood cells and validating their function in living animals. Congratulations to Dr. Taylor Dolberg and Taylor Gunnels. Check out the paper here!

We’re very excited to share our latest work, now published in Nature Biomedical Engineering! Here, we introduce the GEMINI platform for engineering multifunctional extracellular vesicles as versatile, programmable, biological delivery vehicles. Congratulations to Dr. Devin Stranford and Beth. Check out the paper here and check out a press article about the paper here!

We’re excited to announce our recent work developing a method using flexible HaloTag labeling to absolutely quantify surface protein loading at the individual EV level, providing new insights into EV heterogeneity. An interesting new insight is that existing methods can substantially underestimate surface display. Congratulations to Roxi and Devin. Check out the preprint here!

We’re excited to share our recent work developing a resource for teaching mathematical model development in synthetic biology, with associated open-source teaching materials. The teaching module makes use of our previously published GAMES tutorial. Congratulations to Dr. Kate Dray and Katie, as well as our collaborator, Dr. Julius Lucks. Check out the paper here!

We’re excited to share our latest work focused on evaluating synthetic cytokines to enhance the production and performance of promising off-the-shelf cell therapies for treating cancer. We engineered natural killer-like NK92 cells to express six synthetic cytokines and evaluated their utility for driving expansion, cancer cell killing, and resistance to tumor microenvironmental conditions. Congratulations to Simrita, Patrick, Roxi, and Iva. Check out the paper here!

We’re excited to share our recent collaboration with the Kamat Lab, exploring how lipid-protein interactions may be leveraged to direct proteins into extracellular vesicles. Congratulations Taylor, Hailey, and our excellent collaborators Justin and Dr. Neha Kamat of the Kamat Lab. Check out the preprint here!

We’re excited to announce the publication of a comprehensive review on the challenges and opportunities for modulating transgene silencing in mammalian cells! Congratulations to Hailey, who co-lead this important work in collaboration with many leaders of the mammalian synthetic biology community. Check out the paper here!

Way to go, Devin!

Special acknowledgements to science dog Melvin!

We’re excited to announce our latest work, now published in Frontiers in Molecular Biosciences! Through a collaboration with the Bagheri lab, we developed an agent-based computational testbed to explore how tunable CAR T-cell features and tumor properties impact solid tumor treatment. We adapted the Bagheri lab’s ARCADE framework to develop CAR T-cell Agent-based Representation of Cells And Dynamic Environments (CARCADE). This model enables one to explore how changing key tumor/treatment features impacts therapeutic efficacy, yielding hypotheses that correspond to various experimental equivalents. In this study, we validate the model, interrogate the biological underpinnings of various treatment outcomes, and propose novel tuned treatment strategies that can be tested experimentally. Congratulations to Alex and our excellent collaborators Dr. Jessica Yu and Dr. Neda Bagheri of the Bagheri lab! Check out the paper here, and access the CARCADE code freely on GitHub here!

Congrats, Alex!

We’re very excited to share our recent EV engineering work, now on bioRxiv! Here, we introduce the GEMINI platform for engineering multifunctional extracellular vesicles as programmable biological delivery vehicles. We demonstrate EV targeting, cargo loading, and fusion capabilities by delivering Cas9-sgRNA complexes to primary human T cells to knock out an HIV co-receptor. Check out the preprint here!

We’re excited to share a fun perspective published in GEN Biotech on recent work from Michael Elowitz’s lab to engineer synthetic quorum sensing in mammalian cells! Congratulations to Hailey and Gauri. Check out our commentary here and the original study here!

We’re excited to share that our study investigating nanoscale decoys as SARS-CoV-2 inhibitors is out in Small! We learned that engineered decoy nanoparticles are potent viral inhibitors and appear quite resistant to viral evolutionary escape. We hope that the design rules and performance metrics we identified will accelerate the development and preclinical evaluation of this exciting new class of antiviral therapeutics. Congratulations to Taylor, Devin, and Roxi and our excellent collaborator Dr. Neha Kamat. Check out the paper here! Additionally, check out some press about the paper here!

Congrats Iva and Alex

Congratulations Beth!

We’re thrilled to announce the publication of a review in which we survey the existing mammalian synthetic biology toolkit of protein-based receptors and signal-processing components, highlighting efforts to evolve and integrate some of the foundational synthetic receptor systems. This is the review we wish existed, so we wrote it ourselves! Congratulations to Hailey, and our excellent collaborators Janvie and Dr. Leonardo Morsut. Check out the paper here!

We’re thrilled to announce the publication of GAMES, a model development workflow for rigorous characterization of synthetic genetic systems. Congratulations to Kate and Joe, and our excellent collaborators Dr. Niall Mangan and Dr. Neda Bagheri. We hope that GAMES will be useful for synthetic and systems biology researchers interested in systematic, reproducible dynamic model development. Check out the paper here!

We’re excited to introduce our work demonstrating that biologics called “decoy” vesicles can inhibit SARS-CoV-2 infection and are robust to multiple problematic viral mutations. Congratulations to Taylor and Devin, and our excellent collaborator Dr. Neha Kamat. We hope that the engineering insights identified in this study will accelerate the development of this exciting new class of antiviral therapeutics (for COVID-19 and/or other diseases). Check out the preprint here!

We’re thrilled to introduce GAMES, a model development workflow for rigorous characterization of synthetic genetic systems. Congratulations to Kate and Joe, and our excellent collaborators Dr. Niall Mangan and Dr. Neda Bagheri. We hope that GAMES will be useful for synthetic and systems biology researchers interested in systematic, reproducible dynamic model development. Check out the preprint here!

Congrats Hailey!

We’re excited to announce that our new review on the power of using process control concepts to understand and build genetic programs in mammalian cells is out in Current Opinions in Systems Biology! Congrats to Kate, Hailey, and Katie on this informative review (with beautiful figures!)! Check out the new paper here!

Congrats Gauri!

Congrats Roxi!

Congrats Amparo!

Congrats Alex!

Congratulations to Taylor!

We’re excited that SPORT, a computational protein design strategy for adjusting reconstitution propensity to fall into the sweet spot for your application, has officially been released in Nature Chemical Biology today. This Rosetta-based pipeline identifies mutations that tweak reconstitution propensity so that a split protein comes together only when needed – a property that is useful for creating protein-based sensors, biochemical assays, and parts for synthetic biology. Congratulations to Taylor, Jon, Will, Elizabeth, Alex, and our excellent and key collaborators Srivatsan Raman and Tony Meger on this fantastic effort! Check out our new paper here! Additionally, check out some press from Northwestern Engineering on the study here!

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We are thrilled to announce our paper synthetic receptor mechanisms is out in Synthetic Biology today! In this study,  took a deep dive into Modular Extracellular Sensor Architecture (MESA) design, identified several handles for substantially improving performance, and applied these findings to build next-gen receptors. We hope that these insights will help guide the use of MESA receptors for many applications and may also inform the design and refinement of other synthetic receptors. Congrats to Hailey, Patrick, Joe, Anthony, Taylor, Lauren, Everett, and Amy! Check out our paper here!

You can read more about the highlight here.

Katie is our lab’s first recipient of this award, and it will enable a really exciting new collaboration with the Mangan lab at Northwestern University. Congratulations, Katie!!!

Congrats Joe!

Congrats Jon!

This is an extremely competitive award, and a high honor! Congrats Patrick!

Congrats Devin!

This is the highest honor granted by the Program in Biological Sciences! Congrats Anthony!

Science highlights the quorum licensing paper discussing the “wisdom of the crowd” strategy used by cells to make decisions as a population in an article covering highlights from papers published in other journals.

You can the piece here.

Kate was interviewed by the Northwestern International Institute for Nanotechnology. The interview covers a range of topics, including what got her interested in engineering, her research interests, and her personal challenges and highlights from Northwestern! Thanks for sharing your important and deeply personal story and inspiring others, Kate!

Read the full interview here.

She presented her research to a panel of professors and was selected for the award! Congrats Liz!

Joe was interviewed by the Northwestern International Institute for Nanotechnology. The interview covers a range of topics, including what got him interested in engineering, his research interests, his hobbies outside of work, and highlights from his time here at Northwestern!

Read the full interview here.

In a powerful collaboration between the Leonard, Lucks, Mangan, and Jewett labs, NU SynBio teams up to create a one-step diagnostic tool, and recently received funding for the effort. Congrats to the whole team on this massive effort to aid in the current pandemic!

Check out some press about the grant here and here.

We’re thrilled to share our new paper studying next gen synthetic receptors with improved performance and expanded sensing options by taking cues from nature (and good old biophysics). Congratulations to Hailey, Patrick , Joe, Anthony, Taylor, Lauren, Everett, and Amy! Check out our pre-print here.

Congrats both!

Check out the press piece, published by Northwestern’s McCormick School of Engineering, on COMET, our new platform for composing genetic programs in mammalian cells!

COMET – a platform for composing gene expression for mammalian synthetic biology – is out today! Congrats to Patrick, Joe, Hailey and the whole team. Check out the paper here and follow some discussion on Twitter @theleonardlab!

 https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-019-14147-5

We’re thrilled to introduce SPORT, a computational protein design strategy for adjusting reconstitution propensity to fall into the sweet spot for your application. Congratulations to Taylor, Jon, Will, Elizabeth, Alex, and our excellent and key collaborators Srivatsan Raman and Tony Meger. This exciting and collaborative work involved a lot of hard work on both the experimental and computational efforts, and is an exciting step in split protein optimization for a wide array of applications! Check out our preprint here!

Dario Robleto returns to Northwestern as the new Artist-at-Large, working with faculty all over campus to discuss the implications of their research on society and ethics. Several professors in the Center for Synthetic Biology, including Josh Leonard, Danielle Tullman-Ercek, and Julius Lucks, are featured in a video about the collaboration.

To learn more about this exciting, and thought provoking collaboration, check out the video here!

The Illinois Science and Technology Coalition named Josh a 2019 Researcher to Know. Read more here. 

We’re thrilled to share a new toolkit for mammalian synthetic biology: the COMET library of synthetic transcription factors, promoters, and accompanying models. Congratulations to Patrick, Joseph, Joe and Hailey and our key collaborator Neda Bagheri! This is true tour-de-force many years in the making, and we’re excited to share this with the community! Check out our preprint here, and follow some twitter discussion here.

Congrats to Will!

Congrats to Jon!

Josh Leonard’s commentary was featured in a news article in Chemical & Engineering News in July featuring synthetic biologist Martin Fusseneger’s menthol-triggered insulin-producing cells. Josh commented saying the work is “an important first step”, as it was the first time a gene circuit was made entirely from human parts.

Find the full news article here.

Suchitra, Daniel, Austin, Joseph, and Amy all graduated this year with a masters!

Brandon, Vis, and Parth graduate from undergraduate programs, and Vis and Parth continue on to medical school!

Good luck to all in the next phase of their lives! We will miss you!

The Block Museum of Art hosted “Exploring Ethics: Across Art, Humanities, and Science”, a public event that provided researchers in various fields and artists a platform to share their experiences in encountering, raising, and answering new ethical questions as well as engage with the public on these topics. The event featured Northwestern synthetic biologists Danielle Tullman-Ercek, Julius Lucks, and Josh Leonard, as well as Artist-at-Large Dario Robleto and professor of medical education and anthropology Megan Crowley Matoka. Discussions ranged from capturing the ethics of science as art to engage two separate fields and the public, how to best get research to the point of need, and the cultural and ethical impact of organ transplant donation.

See the press release about the event here.

Copyright @SeanSuPhoto |@PurplePhotoCo.

The conference took place from May 17th-19th on Northwestern University’s campus and brought in researchers from around the world with over 150 in attendance. The first ever pre-conference workshop tutorial series took place on Friday, May 17th, providing an open forum for those new to and experienced in mammalian synthetic biology to ask questions to experts about topics such as sensing, cell signaling and differentiation, gene expression, and protein engineering, with professors Julius Lucks, Leonardo Morsut, Tara Deans, and Danielle Tullman-Ercek leading the discussions. Saturday and Sunday featured talks from experts in mammalian synthetic biology such as Linda Griffith, Melody Swartz, Ron Weiss, Martin Fussenegger, and many more. Leonard Lab member Devin Stranford gave a talk on her extracellular vesicle research and its applications to treating HIV. Additionally, Leonard Lab members Joe Muldoon, Taylor Dolberg, Patrick Donahue, Alex Prybutok, Kate Dray, Joseph Draut, Brandon Lim, Vis Kandula, Parth Shah, and Anthony Kang presented posters at the poster session on Saturday evening. Sunday’s talks concluded with a panel discussing the broader ethical implications and impacts of synthetic biology research, featuring Artist-at-Large Dario Robleto, bioethicist Laurie Zoloth, and historians Ben Hurlbut and Gaymon Bennett. Josh was presented with a commemorative plaque for helping organize and host the conference, which will take place by the Centre for Synthetic and Systems Biology at the University of Edinburgh, Scotland.

See the full press release about the conference here.

We’re thrilled to share our work on macrophage quorum licensing. Congratulations to Joe, Yishan, and our key collaborator Neda Bagheri! This exciting work involved both experimental and computational efforts and a lot of hard work! Check out our preprint here!

Congratulations to Vis Kandula, who received the “Outstanding Presenter” award at this year’s Stanford Undergraduate Research Conference, which took place from April 5-7. Of the 400 participants that applied from around North America, 80 individuals were accepted to present their research projects ranging from topics about experimental life sciences to quantitative social sciences. Vis was selected as an Outstanding Presenter in the experimental life sciences category.

Congratulations to Vis Kandula, who was awarded an travel grant to present his work at the Stanford Undergraduate Research Conference (SRC 2019).

Congratulations to Liz Schauer, who was awarded an academic year undergraduate research grant!

Vis was awarded the CLP CAURS (Chicago Area Undergraduate Research Symposium) Award. This award grants Vis special funds to pursue his research and enables him to present at an associated symposium in April 2019.

Amy Hong was just awarded the Fletcher URG Prize—an award for the most outstanding Summer URG projects, Through a highly competitive and rigorous process, Amy was selected as the top student in the natural science and engineering division this year. Congratulations, Amy!

Read more about this exciting event here, and see plans for future workshops here!

Have a master’s, bro!

Northwestern and the Center for Synthetic Biology will host the inaugural Central US Synthetic Biology Workshop on Sep 6-7, 2018. The goal of this event is to create a recurring workshop that brings together synthetic biology researchers and companies from institutions in the Central US. Visit the workshop site and read more here: www.centralsynbio.org

Our new collaborative project, which is joint with Neda Bagheri, will develop new experimental and computational tools for designing and building robust cell-based therapies. This project was funded in the first round of the NIH’s new synthetic-biology-specific funding mechanisms. Read more here, and a related article released by the Chicago Biomedical Consortium here.

Check out Josh’s talk, which was given at TEDxYouth@ASFM themed V³: Vision. Voice. Vigor. The event was hosted by the American School Foundation of Monterrey, Mexico.

Read more about the event here, and check out the talk on YouTube.

Taylor Dolberg and Devin Stranford, each received the Outstanding Poster Presentation Award, given for the top presentation in each of their respective divisions at the 2018 meeting of the American Society of Gene & Cell Therapy!

This is the highest teaching award conferred by Northwestern University. Read more at the two stories below:

https://news.northwestern.edu/stories/2018/may/celebrating-excellence-in-teaching/?linkId=51693991

Five professors earn University Teaching Awards

Congratulations to Lauren Battaglia, who was selected as a Chemistry of Life Processes Summer Scholar, as well as for a McCormick Summer Research Award!

Congratulations to Ashwin kulkarni, Amy Hong, and Joseph Draut, who were each awarded summer undergraduate research grants!

Congratulations to Hailey!

Taylor and Patrick co-authored a commentary on recent progress in engineering cell therapies for cancer, including perspectives on exciting recent innovations in this space. Read more here.

Abbvie senior scientist Mikkel Algire highlights technologies for engineering cell-based therapies for cancer. Read more here.

This collaboration with the Nguyen and Schatz labs decribes the development of highly stable and stimuli/pH-responsive ultra-small polymer-grafted nanobins (usPGNs) as candidate nano-scale drug delivery vehicles. Read more here.

This chapter was published as part of an issue of Methods in Molecular Biology dedicated to the study and therapeutic use of Extracellular RNA. Read more here.

This study, published in Protein Engineering, Design, and Selection, reports the BERDI method for engineering novel metabolite-responsive biosensors, for applications ranging from metabolic engineering to fundamental research. Read more here.

Joseph’s research is highlighted in an article featuring undergraduate summer research. Read more here.

This review discusses both recent advances and emerging general principles for using mammalian synthetic biology to build cell-based therapies that are safe and effective. Read more here.

This chapter summarizes key strategies and challenges associated with studying and harnessing EV-mediated transfer for therapeutic applications, while providing contemporary perspectives on how choices of systems design and analysis method may impact the efficacy of EV-based therapies and the interpretation of EV-based investigations. Read more here.

Kelly’s thesis research was profiled in a feature in Northwestern’s Alumni Magazine

http://www.northwestern.edu/magazine/summer2017/feature/whats-up-docs-sidebar/engineering-cells-to-target-cancer-kelly-anne-schwarz-.html

Josh was selected to join the Scientific Executive Committee of GP-Write, a multinational synthetic biology project dedicated to realizing whole genome synthesis in order to understand, engineer and test living systems.

As part of former Vice President Joe Biden’s Cancer Moonshot Initiative, we received an award from NSF to work with fellow synthetic biologists at MIT to develop novel technologies for enabling cancer immunotherapy.

This paper marks the first demonstration that MESA receptors can be multiplexed to function orthogonally in a single cell. We also report here, for the first time, a quantitative model for evaluating and ultimately designing new MESA receptors and new MESA-based technologies. Read more here.

Congrats to Devin! Read more here.

Cam McDonald will work with Joe Muldoon and Patrick Donahue on a synthetic biology project this summer, supported by the Northwestern Summer Internship Grant Program (SIGP). Congratulations, Cam!

Joseph Draut will work with Patrick Donahue on a synthetic biology project this summer, supported by the McCormick School of Engineering and Applied Science. Congratulations, Joseph!

Amy Hong will work with Joe Muldoon on a computational synthetic biology project this summer, supported by the Northwestern Office of Undergraduate Research. Congratulations, Amy!

Held at the Norris University Center on March 24-25, the Engineering Biology Research Consortium brought together nearly 170 faculty, researchers, and students from universities across the country to discuss current challenges and opportunities in synthetic biology.

Read all about it here!

Congratulations to Taylor, who received an honorable mention / runner up amongst a very competitive field of poster presenters at this past weekend’s EBRC retreat, hosted right here at Northwestern by the Center for Synthetic Biology!

Link here

Synthetic biology: Sensing with modular receptors 
Matthew Brenner, Jang Hwan Cho and Wilson W Wong
doi:10.1038/nchembio.2290
Sensing and responding to diverse extracellular signals is a crucial aspect of cellular decision-making that is currently lacking in the synthetic biology toolkit. The development of modular receptor platforms allows for the rewiring of cellular input-output relationships.

Genetic Engineering and Biotechnology News ran the following press article:

http://www.genengnews.com/gen-news-highlights/synbio-modules-customize-cellular-inputoutput-add-anticancer-function/81253553

http://www.mccormick.northwestern.edu/news/articles/2016/12/engineering-biosensors-to-monitor-metabolism-in-living-cells.html

http://chicagotonight.wttw.com/2016/12/13/northwestern-researchers-rewire-cells-attack-cancer

https://news.northwestern.edu/stories/2016/12/rewired-cells-show-promise-for-targeted-cancer-therapy/

 (click image to see animation!)

Image by Joshua Leonard and Kelly Schwarz, Northwestern University. Cell image by NIAID/NIH, used and modified under Creative Commons 2.0 license.

Congrats to Kelly, Nickey, and Taylor, whose paper was published today in Nature Chemical Biology! This paper is currently spotlighted on the homepage of NCB: http://www.nature.com/nchembio/index.html

Our research was featured in an interview with Josh in Cancer Cytopathology, for a special feature on synthetic biology technologies for treating cancer (Nov 2016) [link]

Andy and Andrew’s paper was accepted for publication in ACS Synthetic Biology (a collaboration with our partners at the University of Warwick)

Joseph Muldoon received the 2015-2016 IBiS Teaching Assistant Excellence Award

Kelly Schwarz was selected as runner-up for this years Distinguished Graduate Researcher Award from the Department of Chemical and Biological Engineering.

Michelle’s collaborative paper with Carol Hall at NC State was published in the Journal of Computational Chemistry.

Josh is now the Co-Director of Northwestern’s NIH-funded Predoctoral Biotechnology Training Program

http://www.biotechtraining.northwestern.edu

Josh was selected to give the annual graduate student invitational seminar to the Department of Biomedical Engineering at the University of Virginia.

Yishan, Michelle, and Brianne’s paper was on macrophage decision making in response to IL-10 was accepted for publication in Innate Immunity.

As part of President Obama and Vice President Biden’s Cancer Moonshot Initiative, Josh will be an invited conferee at a meeting focused on “Systems and Synthetic Biology for Designing Rational Cancer Immunotherapies” in October.

Congratulations to Andrew on being appointed to the Biotechnology Training Program!

Josh is interviewed and Michelle’s research is featured in a Science Magazine technology feature on extracellular vesicles. Read more here:

http://www.sciencemag.org/custom-publishing/technology-features/membrane-messengers-extracellular-vesicles

Congratulations to Neil who was awarded the second place Mickelson Prize at this year’s McCormick Graduation Convocation!

Congratulations to Andrew and Jeci who were married last weekend!

Congratulations to Patrick who was just awarded the Ruth L. Kirschstein National Research Service Award (NRSA) fellowship from NIH!

Congratulations to Praneet who was just awarded a Weinberg College Summer Research Grant!

Congratulations to Michelle who recently published her 2nd first author publication in the Journal of Extracellular Vesicles! Read it here

Andrea and Imran were selected to receive a Summer Undergraduate Research Grant (URG)! Congratulations!

Congratulations to Kelly Schwarz who won this years Leonard Lab Bracket Challenge!

Welcome to our new undergraduate researchers Andrea Shepard, Imran Khan, and Praneet Polineni!

Congratulations to Devin who won a NSF fellowship!

Undergraduate researcher Neil Dalvie has accepted MIT’s offer for graduate studies for the anticipated degree of Ph.D.

Congratulations and good luck!

Keynote address by Professor Mike Jewett from Northwestern University and Professor James Collins from MIT.

http://syntheticbiology.northwestern.edu/

Michelle Hung won a meritorious travel grant from the American Society of Gene & Cell Therapy (ASGCT)!

Welcome to our new undergraduate researcher Pear Dhiantravan!

Welcome to our new undergraduate researcher Shreya Udani!

Welcome to our two new Chemical Engineering PhD students Devin Stranford and Peter Su!

Congratulations to Josh who got officially promoted to Associate Professor with tenure!

Andy Scarpelli successfully defended his thesis!

Austin Rottinghuas joins our lab for a summer research project from Northwestern’s Summer Research Opportunity Program (SROP)

Rachel Dudek successfully defended her thesis!

Wells et al. paper highlighted in Northwestern McCormick Engineering News! Read More

Hung et al. was one of the most viewed JBC articles published in March and April! Check out the article! Pubmed

Congratulations to Michelle Hung for being selected for the Best Mentor Award from Niles West High School

Congratulations to Neil Dalvie for being awarded the Chemistry of Life Processes Summer Scholar Award!

Congratulations to Taylor Dolberg for winning the NDSEG graduate research fellowship!

Congratulations to Taylor Dolberg for winning the NSF graduate research fellowship!

Congratulations to Joe Muldoon for wining the NSF Honorable Mention!

Congratulations to Ragan Pitner and Andy Scarpelli for their recent paper in ACS Synthetic Biology! Get it here ACS

 Congratulations to Michelle Hung for her recent paper in JBC! Pubmed

Congratulations to Danny Wells and Yishan Chuang for their recent paper in PLOS Computational Biology. Read it here Pubmed

Congratulations to Nichole Daringer and Kelly Schwarz for their recent paper in JBC! Get it here JBC

Congratulations to Naomi Lisse for winning an Undergraduate Research Grant!

Michelle Hung invited to speak at the IBiS mini-symposium!

Congratulations to Neil Dalvie for winning an Undergraduate Research Grant!

Welcome to our new Chemical Engineering Ph.D. student Taylor Dolberg to the lab!

Congratulations to Rachel Dudek, Yishan Chuang, and Josh Leonard for publishing in Advances in Experimental Medicine and Biology! Read it here Pubmed

The Leonard Lab features prominently, including the cover art (by Justin Muir), in the current ACS Synthetic Biology issue! ACS Synthetic Biology Special Issue: Viewpoint by Josh Leonard, Podcast interview with Josh Leonard, Daringer et al!

Dr. Leonard and Dr. Bagheri receive a Cornew Innovation Award from CLP

@Addgene Tweets about the Modular Extracellular Sensor Architecture plasmids now available from the Leonard Lab #SynBio

Congratulations to Kelly Schwarz for passing her qualifying exam!

Congratulations to Andrew Younger for being awarded a EPA STAR graduate fellowship!

Congratulations to Andrew Younger for being awarded the Neil Welker IBiS Teaching Assistant Excellence Award!

Congratulations to Kelly Schwarz for being awarded the ChBE Departmental Teaching Assistant award!

Welcome to our new MD/Ph.D. student Patrick Donahue to the Lab!

Congratulations to Joseph Muldoon on being appointed to the Biotechnology cluster!

Congratulations to Michelle Hung on her first first author research article! Read More

Daringer et al. paper highlighted in the Society for Biological Engineering Connections E-Newsletter Read More

Congratulations to Nichole Daringer for successfully defending her thesis!

Congratulations to Andrew Younger for passing his qualifying exam!

Research featured on Northwestern’s Office for Research Discovery website Read More

Congratulations to Yishan Chuang for successfully defending her thesis!

Welcome to our new IBiS Ph.D. student Joseph Muldoon to the lab!

Congratulations to Andrew Younger for being selected for the Best Mentor Award from Niles West High School

Congratulations to Michelle Hung for being awarded the Excellence in Research Award from the American Society of Cell and Gene Therapy

Congratulations to Danny Wells for being selected for a Marine Biology Lab summer course

Niles West High School students, mentored by Andrew Younger, get invited to the Illinois State Science fair and the Intel International Science and Engineering fair in Los Angeles. Good Luck!

 NU Synthetic Biology highlighted on university home page Read More

Dr. Leonard and Northwestern University co-host UK-US workshop on Synthetic Biology