I’m an Assistant Professor at Princeton University in the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering and the Omenn-Darling Bioengineering Institute.

My research program focuses on using protein engineering and synthetic biology approaches to study and control bioenergetic processes in bacteria. I am fascinated by bacterial metabolism and the proteins that have evolved to transport electrons and conserve energy and redox metabolism influences the structure of microbial communities and drive Earth’s geochemical cycles.

Prior to joining Princeton, I was an NSF Postdoctoral Fellow jointly in the lab of Moh El-Naggar at the University of Southern California in Los Angeles, CA, USA and the Center for Electromicrobiology at Aarhus University in Aarhus, DK. I obtained my Ph.D. in Systems, Synthetic, and Physical Biology at Rice University in Houston, TX, USA. There I worked in Jonathan Silberg’s lab building ligand-gated protein switches to control electron transfer to control sulfur assimilation in Escherichia coli. I did part of my Ph.D. at Lawrence Berkeley National Lab in Berkeley, CA, USA where I collaborated with Caroline Ajo-Franklin at the Molecular Foundry.

More broadly, I’ve sought to promote eduction in engineering biology and microbial electrochemsistry through hands-on outreach and open access curricula development.