Biography
I am a graduate student in the Applied and Engineering Physics Department at Cornell, though I conduct research in the Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering Department. I grew up outside Dayton, Ohio developing an expertise in backyard wiffle ball. I spent my undergraduate years at The Ohio State University not playing football and studying physics. During this time, I valued greatly my experiences working one on one with students as a math and physics tutor. Transitioning to graduate school, my interest moved toward biology and computation. I joined the lab of Professor Jeff Varner and began developing computer models of biochemical networks.
Though my research is primarily focused on biological systems, I still have a passion for physics and physics education. I believe that communicating scientific knowledge and promoting science-based thinking to the general public, as well as the next generation of scientists and engineers, is critical. Part of valuing scientific explanation is a desire to share good ideas with younger people, fostering civic engagement and evidence-based thinking.
In my free time, I unashamedly root for a professional baseball team that plays in a city near where I happened to grow up (Go Reds!), I obsess over baseball statistics, and think of ways to parlay this PhD thing into becoming a baseball scout. Also, I don't mind dogs or Bill Murray movies.
Research
My research involves the study and engineering of biochemical networks inside various types of cells. Cells are complex systems that break down nutrients from their environment in order to build fundamental components of life (DNA, proteins, lipids, etc.). They are much better organic chemists than us, as they are able to build complex machines at a molecular scale that facilitate a variety of chemical reactions. There has been much interest in recent years to harness this ability of cellular organisms using genetic tools in order to create designer cells able to efficiently and sustainably produce desired compounds. This field of metabolic engineering has seen many successes in the production of specialty chemicals, biofuels, as well as therapeutic proteins.
I develop computer models of cellular systems, specifically those concerned with bacterial metabolism, that allow for better understanding of mechanisms controlling production of desired chemicals. The goal of my research is to develop predictive models that specify genetic changes we can make to a host cell that lead to more efficient production of a target molecule. One application of metabolic models on which I focus is the production of specific kinds of proteins that are of value to the pharmaceutical industry, namely glycosylated proteins. All of the cells in our body produce these kinds of proteins which are modified by the attachment of complex branches of sugar molecules. Many proteins that have pharmaceutical value, for instance as cancer therapies, require this modification. Typically, cultures of mammalian cells have been used to produce these proteins. Using genetic tools, we can get bacteria to do this too, however their performance is not as strong. In order to address this shortcoming, I use a model-guided approach to design better bacterial hosts for glycosylated protein production. The techniques I use have similar application toward production of biofuels in microbial hosts from inexpensive, renewable sources of carbon. Ultimately, we would like to design organisms from the ground up, tailoring them to any specific need.
