Maya Vaishnaw joins the lab from Concord Academy for 6 weeks as a summer intern!

The lab attends Boston Bacterial Meeting at MIT.

Joe & Zac and Todd present posters there and their posters were swamped by interested attendees!

The Nair lab returns to Medford High School

We engaged and educated Honors Biology students (freshman and sophomores) about Chemical & Biological Engineering and Synthetic Biology. This time we expanded our effort from last year to a three-day module where the students got to transform a reporter plasmid into E. coli and generate an arabinose biosensor! They then used this biosensor for a CSI-style investigation into to identify the “ground zero” of a Intestinal Candidiasis infection that is being spread downriver by infected patients. Slides for Day 1, Day 2, Day 3, and  transformation  protocol are available for others to use. Thanks again for Karen O’Hagan (Tufts), Ms. Audrey Feitor (MHS), and Mr. Rocco Cieri (MHS) for working with us on this! Pictures from our visit are below:

Dr. Nair explains how engineering and science are distinct, but related. Also explaining how engineering design principles are used to build a living sensor.

The students use a UV box to identify patients with Candidiasis that test positive with their engineered biosensor.

Venkatesh, Todd, Zac, and Cassidy discuss their experience with engineering with the students.