Team:MIT advisors

Jonathan Babb is currently performing research to extend the life of silicon technology as well as to create the next generation of carbon-based computing platforms in the emergent fields of synthetic biology and BioCAD. Formerly, Jonathan was a lecturer at Princeton University and founder and CEO of a logic emulation startup. Dr. Babb earned a BS in electrical engineering from the Georgia Institute of Technology and an SM and PhD in electrical engineering and computer science from MIT. He is a member of the IEEE.

Narendra Maheshri is an Assistant Professor of Chemical Engineering at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). He has bachelor’s degrees in both Chemical Engineering and Biology from MIT, and a PhD in Chemical Engineering from the University of California (UC) Berkeley, where he focused on engineering viral vectors for gene therapy.
In his post-doctoral studies at UC San Francisco and Harvard, he became interested in systems’ biology and gene regulation. His current research interests are in understanding the dynamics of gene regulation and gene regulatory networks in single cells using a combined experimental and theoretical approach. His group also explores methods to translate these fundamental studies to tools for rapidly creating phenotypic diversity in microorganisms, with potential applications in biotechnology. He has coauthored three patents and published in internationally recognized scientific journals such as PNAS (Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences), Science, and Nature Biotechnology

Natalie Kuldell did her doctoral and post-doctoral work at Harvard Medical School. She develops discovery-based curricula drawn from the current literature to engage undergraduate students in structured, reasonably authentic laboratory experiences. She has also written educational materials to improve scientific communication as it occurs across disciplinary boundaries and as it's taught in undergraduate subjects. Her research examines gene expression in eukaryotic cells, focusing most recently on synthetic biology and redesign of the yeast mitochondria. She serves as Associate Education Director for SynBERC, an NSF-funded research center for Synthetic Biology, and Councilor at Large for the Institute of Biological Engineering.

Ron Weiss joined the BE and EECS faculties as dual associate professor (with tenure) starting in July 2009, having moved from Princeton University where he held comparable rank in their department of electrical engineering and with a joint appointment in their department of molecular biology. His degrees are double BA in Computer Science and Economics from Brandeis University (1992), followed by SM and PhD in EECS at MIT (1994, 2001). Professor Weiss is a prominent and widely respected figure in the emerging field known as ‘synthetic biology’, with emphasis on designing molecular circuits governing cell behavior using quantitative systems modeling approaches. He is expected to help lead MIT’s efforts in both synthetic biology and systems biology, and indeed to guide their integration.

Tom Knight is a senior research scientist in the MIT Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory, part of the MIT School of Engineering. Inspired in part by the work of Harold Morowitz, a Yale physicist and biologist, Knight studied biochemistry, genetics, and cellular biology, and set up a biology lab within MIT's Laboratory for Computer Science. In this lab he created the concept of the BioBrick and began creating a library of BioBricks that could be used to build biological computation structures. Today, BioBricks form the basis of the iGEM (International Genetically Engineered Machine) competition.
Knight continues to focus on Synthetic Biology at the Knight Laboratory.