Members of the Nair lab go to Protein Society 32 Annual Meeting! (July 9 -12)
Joe and Bruno present posters on their work.

Prof. Nair goes to Munich for Metabolic Engineering 12! (June 24 – 28)
…and presents a poster on Venkatesh’s work.

It was also great to see Dr. Zhao and meet some of the lab alumni.

Nair lab’s first graduate finds a job! (June 21)
Congratulations to Venkatesh for getting a job at LifeMine Therapeutics! Thanks for proving that the skills you learned in the lab have any commercial value!

The lab re-visits Medford High School! (June 11 – 14)
This is to continue our ongoing efforts to introduce engineering and synthetic biology to students interested in life science. Joe, Trevor, and Brett help Prof. Nair and teacher Ms. Audrey Feitor. 


 

Prof. Nair presents a talk at SEED 2018 in sunny Scottsdale, AZ (June 3 – 7)
The talk was about Venkatesh’s recent paper. See more about the other fantastic talks here.

Joe presents at the 1st annual Tufts SEC (Science & Engineering Complex) social event.
Also presenting was our neighbor Prof. Madeleine Oudin.

The lab welcomes Elizabeth Chavez! (June 1)
Elizabeth is is an REU student from UNC – Chapell Hill! She will be working as a joint student with the Hassoun group to advance computational metabolic engineering. Welcome, Elizabeth!

The lab goes to BBM again! (May 31 – June 1)
Joe and Bruno present posters on their work!

Sean and Trevor pass their oral qualifiers! (May 31)
Congrats to Sean and Trevor for successfully passing their oral qualifying exam! A job well done!

Venkatesh’s work featured in NSF’s Science 360! (May 22)
Links to NSF Science 360 and Youtube.

Venkatesh graduates! (May 19)
Prof. Nair hooded Venkatesh, the first PhD student to graduate from the Nair lab. Venkatesh’s parents, sister, and (future) brother-in-law flew in just for the event and were in attendance! Pictures are coming soon!

Venkatesh successfully defends his Ph.D. thesis! (April 17)
Congratulation, Venkatesh – job well done! Thanks to his committee members, Prof. Joshua Krizter, Prof. Kyong Lee, and Prof. Lee Lynd (who came down from Dartmouth and presented an excellent talk earlier in the day).

Emma joins the lab! (April 10)
Emma Meehan (ChBE ’21) joins the lab as an undergrad researcher. Welcome!

Trevor is recognized as an honorable mention by NSF GRFP! (Apr 3)
Congratulations, Trevor! So close…

Prof. Nair attends ACS BIOT spring meeting in New Orleans, LA. (Mar 18 – 22)
Met current and former Zhao lab members, as always, for lunch. Small group this time – with Zengyi Shao (Iowa State), Huimin Zhao (UIUC), Ryan Cobb (Dow Agrosciences), and Behnam Enghiad (grad student in the Zhao lab).

Venkatesh’s paper is accepted for publication in Nature Communications!
Congrats, Venkatesh! Look for the article “A Semi-synthetic Regulon Enables Rapid Growth of Yeast on Xylose” here.

Press release associated with this publication: Tufts Now!, Biofuels International, EurekAlert!, NewsWise, and MediaNet.

Also thanks to Faculty Research Awards: Open Access Publishing and Graduate Open Access Funding for paying the exorbitant publisher fees!

Zac’s review article is accepted for publication in Current Opinion in Biotechnology!
Congratulations, Zac! Here is the link to, “Synthetic Biology in Probiotic Lactic Acid Bacteria: At the Frontier of Living Therapeutics”.

Joe’s review article is accepted for publication in Annual Review of Biomedical Engineering!
Yay, Joe! The article was written with Chase Beisel (formerly of NCSU) and is titled, “Synthetic Biology Approaches to Engineer Probiotics and Members of the Human Microbiota for Biomedical Applications”. Here’s the link.

Kelsey leaves the group. 🙁
Undergrad Kelsey decides to leave the lab to focus on her entrepreneurial work. Good luck with everything!

New group photo up!
After several tries, we managed to get everyone in one photo!