Leadership

Executive Committee:

Councilors at Large

Graduate Councilor:

Undergraduate Councilor:

Biographies:

J. Christopher Anderson
J. Christopher Anderson received his B.S. in Chemistry from the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill in 1998; his Ph.D. in Chemistry from the Scripps Research Institute in 2003; and did post-doctoral work in Synthetic Biology at the University of California, San Francisco from 2003-2007. Chris joined the Department of Bioengineering at the University of California, Berkeley as an Assistant Professor in 2007. He serves as a Principal Investigator and the chassis thrust leader for the Synthetic Biology Engineering Research Center (SynBERC). For the past seven years, Anderson has served as lead instructor for Berkeley's International Genetically Engineered Competition (iGEM) team. The Anderson lab develops foundational technologies for Synthetic Biology, a ground-up approach to genetic engineering. Using a combination of software, theory, robotics, and driving applications, the Anderson Lab seeks to realize the dream of transforming genetic engineering into a formal engineering discipline.

Chris has served as an iGEM judge since 2007 and will help IBE coordinate the Americas West Coast Regionals iGEM Jamboree for 2012. That Jamboree will be co-hosted by IBE with UC Berkeley, Stanford, and UCSF, and Chris will serve as the local liaison between IBE and the three universities. Planning for major corporate sponsorship has already begun.


Bill Batchelor
Before coming to Auburn as Dean of the College of Agriculture and Director of the Alabama Agricultural Experiment Station, Dr. Batchelor was the head of the Department of Agricultural and Biological Engineering at Mississippi State University. Dr. Batchelor earned his bachelor's and master's degrees in agricultural engineering at the University of Georgia in 1986 and 1987, respectively, and his doctorate in agricultural engineering at the University of Florida in 1993. He worked at Iowa State University from 1994 until 2005, advancing to the rank of professor. He joined the Mississippi State faculty in 2005 and led the development of the Sustainable Energy Research Center at Mississippi State University. He also led faculty in creating a proposal that was awarded $26 million in grants from the U.S. Department of Energy for operational costs. The center conducted research on sources of renewable fuels, including bio-crude, bio-oil and syngas that do not compete with existing crops, such as corn and soybeans, needed for the global food supply. Dr. Batchelor was also the director of the Energy Institute at Mississippi State, which had approximately 200 researchers in several centers and departments. From 2005 to 2007 he served as a Distinguished International Professor for the University of Hohenheim in Stuttgart, Germany. And, in 2009 he was named a Fellow of the American Society of Agricultural and Biological Engineers for his contributions to information and electrical technologies and biological engineering.


Jessica Calkins
Within my past years, I have completed a Biochemistry degree from Georgia Institute of technology. During my years in undergrad I was one of three founders of the Society of Asian Scientist and Engineers (SASE) at Georgia Tech. I served as both a VP and adviser for the organization. I was also an active member of a sorority (Zeta Tau Alpha) where I lead homecoming events and I served on the judicial board. I have also completed two internships with the Procter and Gamble Company where I worked on both product development and product research in the research and development department. Along with my commitments, I have volunteered with Grady Hospital where I worked in the Neurosurgery Intensive Care unit. I was also an active member of the Georgia Tech Salsa Club, Team Buzz (a community service organization), Campus Outreach, NSCS, and Student Hospital Connections. I am currently pursuing a Master's degree in Biochemical Engineering at the University of Georgia. My research topic is based on using photosynthetic membranes for bio-fuel cells to ultimately replace energy sources with a renewable green alternative.


Melanie Correll
Dr. Melanie Correll is an associate professor in the Agricultural and Biological Engineering Department at the University of Florida. She graduated with a B.S. from Clemson University and a Ph.D. in Biochemical Engineering from Worcester Polytechnic Institute. Her research uses the latest tools and technologies to study plant and environmental interactions. She has studied plant growth and development in challenging environments including experiments performed on the International Space Station in 2007 and 2010. She has applied molecular techniques to identify gene expression changes in plants to varying levels of gravitational acceleration and to identify biochemical pathways that are regulated in spaceflight. Her Earth-based research focuses on improving crop models by incorporating more genetic information to predict how different genotypes of plants will respond to different environments. Her research has resulted in over 20 peer-reviewed publications and she has received awards from the European Space Agency (ESA), NASA, the American Society for Gravitational and Space Biology (ASGSB) and the Florida section of the American Society for Agricultural and Biological Engineering. She teaches courses in Biological Engineering and has developed workshop materials to bring computational biology into the biology curriculum. She currently serves on the Board of Directors for ASGSB and is a Councilor at Large for the Institute of Biological Engineers.


Czarena Crofchek
Dr. Czarena Crofcheck is an associate professor in the Department of Biosystems and Agricultural Engineering at the University of Kentucky. Her research emphasis is in bioprocessing, specifically downstream processing of value-added proteins and the conversion of biomass to chemicals and fuels. In the area of bioenergy, her research projects have focused on the pretreatment of biomass to produce ethanol, the development of heterogeneous catalysts to produce biodiesel, the evaluation of stabilization strategies for bio-oil from pyrolysis, and the utilization of algae for CO2 recycling. She has been a principle or co-principle investigator on grants totaling over $4 million. She has published more than 30 peer reviewed journal articles with over 50 conference papers and presentations. Dr. Crofcheck teaches probability and statistics, energy and mass transfer, thermochemical conversion of biomass, and senior design. She has won several teaching awards, on the department, college, university, and national level.

Dr. Crofcheck received her Bachelor of Science degree in chemical engineering from Michigan State University, her Master's of Science degree in chemical engineering from the University of Kentucky, and her Ph.D. in biosystems and agricultural engineering from the University of Kentucky. She is a licensed Professional Engineer in Kentucky.

Dr. Crofcheck has been a member of IBE since 2000. She has been an IBE councilor for two terms (2004-2008), the IBE treasurer (2007-2009), a program chair for two annual meetings (2007 & 2012), on the meetings council (2010-2011), a session chair for multiple sessions, and served as a judge for the student poster and bioethics essay competitions. She believes that IBE reflects a well-represented cross section of the area of biological engineering, while still having critical mass in several key areas, such that, the strength of IBE is both diversity and specialization. In the next years, she believes that IBE needs to build membership through key networking activities, focus on strategies that will have the best payoff for the risk, and increase the revenue stream to further strengthen the organization.


Mark Haidekker
Mark Andreas Haidekker is associate professor of engineering at the University of Georgia. He completed his university degree (Diploma) in Electrical Engineering at the University of Hannover, Germany. After ?ve years in industry, he returned to graduate school and received his doctoral degree in Computer Science from the University of Bremen, Germany. From 1999 to 2001, he was employed at the University of California, San Diego ?rst as postdoctoral fellow, then as research scientist. Between 2002 and 2007, he served as assistant professor at the University of Missouri before assuming his present position in 2007. His interests are biophotonics and biomedical imaging.


Karmella Haynes
Karmella Haynes earned her Ph.D. in Molecular Genetics at Washington University, St. Louis. She entered the field of synthetic biology during her postdoctoral training, which focused on designing bacterial DNA for computational applications (Davidson College, HHMI fellowship) and engineering synthetic proteins to control human cell fates (Harvard Medical School, NCI & NIH fellowships). The former project received attention from international media, including NPR's Science Friday, and was awarded the 2008 "Publication of the Year" by the Journal of Biological Engineering. She has mentored iGEM teams at Davidson (2007, 2008) and Harvard (2010) and is currently a member of the executive judges committee (2011). In 2011, she joined the faculty at the Arizona State University Ira Fulton School of Biological and Health Systems Engineering, where she uses synthetic, systems, and quantitative biology to engineer gene and protein-based biomedical devices, to elucidate mechanisms of molecular cell biology, and to teach students to synthesize engineering principles with biology. Dr. Haynes aims to continue contributing well-characterized mammalian cell resources to open source toolkits for synthetic biology (i.e., the Registry of Standard Biological Parts) to help the greater synthetic biology community cooperatively accelerate the pace of therapeutic technologies via modular design.


Alyssa Henning
As an undergraduate at Cornell University (B.S. Biological Engineering, 2011), my research focused on two subjects—synthetic biology, through the International Genetically Engineered Machine (iGEM) Competition, and the imaging of chicken embryos via micro-computed tomography to advance our understanding of cardiogenesis and congenital heart defects. It was at a Cornell IBE meeting in Fall 2008 that I first heard about iGEM, and it was through IBE that six friends and I co-founded the Cornell iGEM team.

Since graduating last May, I have made several contributions to the biological engineering community. I have successfully transitioned to industry as a DNA Padawan at Ginkgo BioWorks, where I am developing a genome engineering pipeline. This fall, I volunteered as a poster judge at iGEM Americas. And at SB5.0, I formed a group of dedicated iGEMers called the iGEM Outreach Collaboration Committee (CollabCom) to steer a global human practices collaboration and form iGEM's alumni association. We have created two websites: CommunityBricks, an open-source collection of human practices activities and lesson plans, and AlumniGEM, a networking platform that will keep alumni connected to iGEM and synthetic biology. At the iGEM Regional and Championship Jamborees, CollabCom members and I organized AlumniGEM workshops; a live blog of jamboree events; the iGEMer's Prize; and Words Like Fire, a "synbio slam" where iGEMers shared their views on the future of synthetic biology through poetry, talks, speeches, and other variants on the spoken word. v With your support, as an IBE Councilor, I will continue to ensure that other young professionals stay involved in the biological engineering community. I would like to help university chapters implement fun, exciting programs that educate the public about biological engineering. I would also like to give students more opportunities to present their research by organizing venues in which young people can voice their ideas for advancing the field. I believe that my research experience, organizational skills, and enthusiasm will help IBE achieve these goals.


Soonjo Kwon
Soonjo Kwon is currently Professor of the Biological Engineering Department at Utah State University. He got Ph.D. in Chemical Engineering and Materials Science Department at University of California, Irvine in 2000. He was postdoctoral fellow in Bioengineering Department in University of California, San Diego from 2000 to 2002.

His current research activities focus on four areas: 1. Health risk assessment of human exposure to air pollutants and nanoparticles using engineered tissues. 2. Micro-biomechanics of breast cancers. 3. A micro-/nano-scale biomechanical device for mesenchymal stem cell differentiation. 4. Continuous culture methods for process optimization in the production of biophamaceuticals by mammalian cells.

In the professional service area, he is a Councilor at Large and a Chair of the International Relations Committee for the IBE, and a Faculty Advisor of the BMES Student Chapter. He has served as an Editorial Board Member for the Journal of Bioengineering & Biomedical Science.


Eric McLamore
Dr. McLamore's research focuses on bridging the gap between the life sciences and engineering by creating hypothesis driven technology. We specialize in developing and applying bio and nano sensors for investigating biological transport in environmental, agricultural and biomedical applications.


Ronald Sims
Ronald Sims is Professor and Head of the Biological Engineering Department. Dr. Sims teaches graduate and advanced undergraduate courses in biochemical engineering, biophotonics, and downstream processes. His research has been described in over 100 refereed publications including journal articles, books, and U.S. Government reports. He is a member of the Executive Committees for the Synthetic Biomanufacturing Center and the Biofuels Center. Within these Centers he currently is leading a biofuels team in the development of algal-based processes and technologies for large-scale open pond, lagoon, and raceway engineered systems, and in the collaborative development of microbial engineered systems for bioplastics production based on synthetic biological engineering. Dr. Sims has worked previously for Mobay Chemical Corporation, for Research Triangle Institute (North Carolina), and for the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Dr. Sims is a recipient of the Utah Governor's Medal for Science and Technology.


Max Song
Max Song is currently a sophomore at Brown University, studying for a Sc.B. in Biomedical Engineering. He was a member of the 2011 Brown-Stanford iGEM team, and co-founded AlumniGEM, iGEM's first alumni association. His research interests include applications of synthetic biology and biological engineering as enabling technologies for space exploration. Outside the lab, he is interested in building communities that encourage innovation and entrepreneurship in the scientific sector. This coming summer, he plans to work as Teaching Fellow in the Bioinformatics track at Singularity University.


Liju Yang
Dr. Liju Yang is currently an assistant professor in the Department of Pharmaceutical Sciences and the Biomanufacturing Research Institute and Technology Enterprise (BRITE) at North Carolina Central University (NCCU). She received her B.S. degree in Chemistry from Hangzhou Teachers College and M.S. degree in Analytical Chemistry from Hangzhou University, China. She received her Ph.D. degree in Biological and Agricultural Engineering from the University of Arkansas in December 2003, and did her postdoctoral research in the area of bioMEMs in the School of Electrical and Computer Engineering at Purdue University. In February 2006, Dr. Yang joined NCCU as a faculty member. Her current research focuses on two areas: (i) the development of novel biosensors, biochips and microdevices for applications in food safety, drug discovery, and biomedical diagnostics; and (ii) Nanomaterials interfacing biological species.

Working with IBE has been a great pleasure to me in the past several years. I will continue to work with all IBE members to promote the development of IBE as a professional organization. I will commit my service to IBE through helping organizing its annual meetings, increasing the number of IBE members, and building networks among engineers, scientists, technologists and allied professionals in biological engineering fields.