Paul Abraham
As Laboratory Research Manager of the Secure Ecosystem Engineering and Design (SEED) SFA, Paul is responsible for the overall scientific direction and management of SEED, including establishing scientific priorities, monitoring progress, allocating resources and workforce, and reporting to the US Department of Energy (DOE). In addition this this role, Paul serves as a staff scientist in the Biosciences Division at ORNL as a systems biologist with an expertise in biological mass spectrometry and will contribute to the functional characterization of plants and microbial communities.
Melissa Cregger
Staff Scientist in the Integrative Microbiome Group at ORNL. Melissa is an Ecosystem Ecologist and Scientific Co-Manager for the Secure Ecosystem Engineering Design SFA. Melissa is responsible for coordinating the technical aspects fo the SFA, setting milestones for project staff with Paul Abraham in delivering the expected products of the SFA. Melissa has expertise in ecosystem, community, and microbial ecology and will contribute to community and ecosystem tasks.
Josh Michener
Staff Scientist in the Synthetic Biology Group at ORNL. Josh is a microbial geneticist, biological engineer, and Scientific Co-Manager for the Secure Ecosystem Engineering Design SFA. Josh will assist Paul Abraham with coordinating the technical aspects of the project, setting milestones for project staff, and assist in delivering the expected products of the SFA. Josh will oversee the bacterial experiments and lead the engineering efforts for a better horizontal gene transfer delivery system.
Xiaohan Yang
Senior Staff Scientist in the Synthetic Biology Group at ORNL. Xiaohan is a plant synthetic biologist who specializes in plant genetic engineering using genome editing and synthetic biology tools. He will oversee plant biosystems design throughout the project and will focus on in situ microbiome engineering, especially the impact of synthetic secreted regulatory proteins (SSRPs) and small interfering RNAs (siRNAs) on fungal gene expression. He will also be involved in biodesign strategies to detect targeted biological signals and counteract unintended genetic modifications.
Dan Jacobson
Chief Scientist of Computational Systems Biology. Dan is a computational systems biologist who specializes in explainable-AI, combinatorial data analytics, and network theory as applied within and across all omics and environmental layers. Much of the work in his lab utilizes the supercomputing architectures at ORNL. Dan's team was the first to break the exascale barrier and holds the records for the top three fastest calculations done in human history (all of which were done for systems biology projects). Dan will be responsible for overseeing the development and integration of computational tools and methods.
Carrie Eckert
Carrie is a Staff Scientist and the new Synthetic Biology Group lead in the Biosciences Division at ORNL. For the SEED project, she is developing CRISPR-Cas tools in target microbial organisms affecting plant growth for genotype-phenotype discovery, as well as the development of more robust and accurate CRISPR guide RNA design tools using genome-wide libraries and machine learning with Dan Jacobson and David Kainer.
Joanna Tannous
Staff Scientist in the Synthetic Biology group at ORNL. Joanna is a fungal geneticist who specializes in developing genome editing tools in non-model fungal species to elucidate the molecular mechanisms and pathways regulating fungal pathogenicity, metabolism, and the interaction of the fungus with its host and surrounding microbial communities. For the SEED project, she is developing genetic mitigation approaches such as gene drives for the control of plant pathogens.
Ilenne Del Valle Kessra
Staff Scientist in the Synthetic Biology group at ORNL.
Tomas Rush
Staff Scientist in the Integrative Microbiomics group at ORNL.
Jared LeBoldus
Collaborator at Oregon State University.
Parastoo Azadi
Collaborator at the Complex Carbohydrate Research Center at the University of Georgia
Breeanna Urbanowicz
Collaborator at the Complex Carbohydrate Research Center at the University of Georgia
Dana Carper
Technical professional in the Bioanalytical Mass Spectrometry Group at ORNL. She is a project manager of the SFA.