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I am an Assistant Professor in the Department of Chemical Engineering at Texas Tech University, where my laboratory develops programmable microbial systems for applications in food biotechnology, sustainable biomanufacturing, and human health. Our research integrates synthetic biology, metabolic engineering, and bioengineering to redesign microorganisms with new metabolic, chemical, and ecological functions. A major focus of the lab is the development of edible and food-compatible microorganisms as programmable biomanufacturing platforms. Building on my previous work developing a hybrid chemical–biological process to convert waste polyethylene into nutritionally valuable microbial biomass, we are exploring how engineered microorganisms can transform unconventional and waste-derived feedstocks into protein, nutrients, metabolites, therapeutics, and other useful compounds.

A second major direction of the lab focuses on engineering human commensal microorganisms to perform new functions at the host–microbe interface. While significant progress has been achieved in understanding the gut microbiome, the native flora found within other major body cavities, such as the skin, oral, mucosal, and lung, have been relatively unexplored. During my postdoctoral research in the Voigt Lab at MIT, I engineered the skin bacteria Staphylococcus epidermidis to degrade host-derived fatty acids and biosynthesize volatile terpenes, demonstrating how resident microbes can be programmed to modify the chemical environment of the skin. Building from this foundation, we are interested in developing commensal microorganisms for localized molecule production, non-invasive sensing, and the construction of functional microbial communities capable of interacting with both their hosts and surrounding environments.

My research is broadly motivated by a simple question: how far can we extend the functional capabilities of living systems through engineering? My graduate work in chemical biology focused on designing chemically modified peptide mimetics to manipulate protein–protein interactions, and my subsequent research has progressively expanded from engineering molecules to engineering individual microorganisms and microbial systems. Across these areas, our goal is to understand how biological functions can be redesigned, recombined, and integrated into increasingly programmable systems. Ultimately, the lab seeks to engineer microorganisms as living platforms that operate across microbe–environment, host–microbe, and microbe–microbe interfaces, enabling biological functions that extend beyond traditional boundaries.

[1] Commensal bioengineering for therapeutic and environmental applications
[2] Living biomanufactories for resilient food systems
[3] Evolving peptides for targeted therapeutics and programmable microbiomes