News
2023 News and Events
October
- Claudia gave a Leading Edge Lecture at the University of Toronto on “Design of self-assembling protein architectures as functional materials”.
- We are excited to start our new NSF Emerging Frontiers Research and Innovation Project on building artificial biofilms for critical minerals extraction. Learn more about this project here.
August
- Lab presented their research at the Society of Industrial Microbiology and Biotechnology annual meeting in Minneapolis. Sun, Eliana and Francois presented posters and Ruijie gave a session talk! The meeting was also a great opportunity to reconnect with previous Lab alumni, including Swati Choudhary (Head Strain Engineering @ Shiru) and Erin Marasco (Global Biology Lead @ Cargill).
July
- Claudia gave an invited talk at the inaugural GRC Protein Engineering Conference which will be held in alternating years of the GRC Biocatalysis conference.
May
- Another academic year completed with the end of the Spring Semester – BTI sends everyone off into the summer with its annual Spring BBQ.
- Rescue of 16 lost duckling on campus – mom nowhere to be found and ducklings at risk to be run over by cars. Claudia gathered and shuttled them to the wildlife rescue center in Roseville….
- Lab alumni David Babson (Executive Director, MIT Climate Grand Challenges), Grayson Warwzyn (Associate Director Business Development, PheromeZ) and Swati Choudhary (Head of Strain Engineering, Shiru) send greeting from SynBioBeta – the Global Synthetic Biology Conference!
- The BioTechnology Institute and Amano Enzymes host the 1st North-America-Japan Enzyme Technology Symposium at the University of Minnesota. It was a great success and we plan on a repeat in the coming years.
March
- Claudia participates and gives a lecture at the International Mycology Course organized by Prof. Vania Vicente at the Federal University of Parana (UFPA) in Brazil – as part of our labs longstanding collaboration on fungal natural products with Prof. Vicente and UFPA.
- Our team presented their DOE ARPA-E funded EcoSynBio project at the annual ARPA-E summit in Washington DC.
January
- Happy New Year 2023!
2022 News and Events
December
- Our lab is excited to be part of the Army Center of Synthetic Biology. Claudia attends the kickoff meeting at the DEVCOM ARL Army Research office in Durham, NC. We will be designing extremophile functional composite materials.
November
- Claudia presents a session key-note lecture on the genetically programmable materials at the AIChE annual meeting in Phoenix, AZ.
July
- GRC Biocatalysis conference: Claudia chairs a session at the Biocatalysis meeting. Ruijie and Sun present posters on their enzyme scaffolding projects.
June
- Claudia travels to Germany to give a talk at the Third International Conference on Engineered Living Materials in Saarbruecken hosted by the Leibnitz Institute.
May
- Claudia gives an invited talk on “Engineering a living biocomposite materials” in the “New Biomaterials” session on at the 44th SBFC Symposium of the Society of Microbiology and Industrial Biotechnology (SIMB) in New Orleans. It was great to connect with lab alumni Dr. David Babson (Program Director at ARPAE) and Dr. Swati Choudhary (Director of Strain Engineering at Shiru)
- First Biotechnology Institute Spring BBQ on the Gortner Lab porch after emerging from the pandemic. Lab members Gabriela, Ruijie and Sun enjoying Burgers , Brats and Refreshments!!
March
- Claudia participated in the College of Biological Sciences “Petri Dish” Community Event on “Living Better with Biiology” at Urban Growler
January
- Happy New Year 2022!
- Claudia starts in her new position as Director of the Biotechnology Institute
2021 News and Events
December
- Our Engineered Living Materials paper is published in Nature Communications! Great work Sun, Sara and Anaya!
- Our ELM work is featured on the UM home page as Research Brief and as Nature Communications 2021 Editors Highlight!
November
- Kick-off of our new ECOSynBio ARPA-E funded project on the development of a cell-free electrobiocatalytic CO2 conversion platform in collaboration with the Gralnick and Elias Labs at the UM!
September
- Claudia gives a talk on “Genetically programmable protein-based materials for biocatalysis and beyond” (key note) at MECP2020+1 (Multistep Enzyme Catalyzed Processes Conference of the European Federation of Biotechnology)
August
- Sara Bratsch starts a new position as Staff Scientist at the Minnesota Dept. of Agriculture – good luck on your new journey!
- First in person social event! Lab BBQ.
June
- Claudia gives a lecture on “Functional protein-based biomaterials” at the CSIRO Australia Synthetic Biology for Production of Bio-Based Materials Symposium
May
- Claudia presents on “Functional protein-based biomaterials for biocatalysis and beyond” (key note) at the Biocatalysis session of the European Federation of Biotechnology (EFB) Conference
April
- Claudia gives a key-note lecture on “Bioinspired functional protein-based materials” at the 42nd Symposium on Biomaterials, Fuels and Chemicals (SBFC) of the Society for Industrial Microbiology and Biotechnology
- Eliana Pena joined the lab as first year BMBB graduate student.
- Anaya’s and Sunyoung’s review article on bacterial microcompartments accepted for publication in Current Opinions for Microbiology
March
- Minju’s and Claudia’s reviews article on programmable materials for biocatalysis has been accepted and published as cover article in MDPI Catalysts
January & February
- Happy New Year 2021 – we are all hoping to get back to normal during this year
- Spring semester has started – Zoom teaching continues….
- No undergrads in the lab for this semester and summer