STEPHANOPOULOS - Key Persons
Anush (she/her/hers) grew up in the Canary Islands (Spain) daughter of immigrant parents (Argentinians). She hence considers herself a Hispanic/Latina. With 11 years old, Anush was selected to participate at the Program of Detection and Stimulation of Precocious Talent in Mathematics (ESTALMAT) by the Real Academy of Exact, Physical, and Natural Sciences in Spain. She later achieved the best GPA of the State and the University Entrance Exam. Her passion for biochemical systems and mathematics motivated her to study Chemical Engineering. She received her Diploma in Chemical Engineering (equivalent to a Master of Engineering degree) from the Complutense University of Madrid (UCM), Spain, in 2013 - this included an exchange year at the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT), Germany. She first combined math and biology in research in 2012, when she worked as an ERASMUS intern researcher at the Vienna University of Technology (TUW), Austria.
Anush obtained her Ph.D. in Chemical Engineering from the École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL), Switzerland. During her Ph.D., Anush modeled the metabolism of malaria parasites and identified essential metabolic pathways for the survival of Plasmodium parasites in their liver development - in collaboration with the Universities of Bern and Geneva (Switzerland), Leiden (the Netherlands), and the Sanger Institute (UK). She won the 2016 Excellence Teaching Award by the EPFL Chemistry and Chemical Engineering section and the 2019 Annual Jeffrey Hubbell and Melody Swartz Young Bioengineer Award.
Since 2019, Anush is a Postdoctoral fellow in the laboratory of Professor George M Church at Harvard Medical School. Since 2020, Anush is also a research affiliate in the laboratory of Professor Gregory Stephanopoulos, where she is developing molecule feeding strategies to achieve desired phenotypes. In 2021, Anush was selected as an MIT ChemE Rising Star.
Irum Perveen was born and raised in Islamabad, Pakistan. She completed her master and PhD studies from Department of Microbiology, Quiaid-i-Azam University, Islamabad, Pakistan. She conducted her 3 years PhD research at Department of Chemistry, Texas A and M University (TAMU) under the supervision of Professor Dr. Coran Watanabe and in 2017 she successfully defended her PhD thesis.
During that period, She investigated the enzymatic approach capable of degrading the lipofuscin, A2E and cycloretinal (all-trans retinal dimer), largely implicated in the pathogenesis of Age Related Macular Degeneration (AMD), a leading cause of blindness in elderly.
Since November 2018, she is a member of the Stephanopoulos Research Lab as a Postdoctoral Fellow. Her research focuses on investigating ways of metabolic engineering of the E. coli to produce isoprenoids.
Irum Perveen, Muhammad Asam Raza, Shama Sehar, Iffat Naz, Safia Ahmed. (2019). Purification of recombinant peroxidase from Thermobifida fusca IP1 for β-carotene degradation in to industrial flavouring agents. International Food Research Journal. 26(2): 731-736.
Irum Perveen, Safia Ahmed. (2016). Enzymatic degradation of 7-Ketocholesterol (7-KC), a new strategy for the treatment of atherosclerosis. Atherosclerosis, DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.atherosclerosis.2016.07.814.
Manish Rai was born and raised in Sherpur Village, Ghazipur, Uttar Pradesh, India. He completed his Bachelor's degree in Biology (BSc.) from VBS Purvanchal University Jaunpur, Uttar Pradesh, India, and his master's in Biochemistry from Jiwaji University Gwalior, Madhya Pradesh, India. He did his Doctor of Philosophy (Ph.D.) in Biological Sciences with Dr. Kausik Chakraborty from CSIR- CSIR-Institute of Genomics and Integrative Biology (CSIR-IGIB), New Delhi, India. During his Ph.D., his work focused on understanding the role of proteostasis in the laboratory thermo-evolution in E. coli. From this work, they were able to find the link between proteostasis and cellular metabolism. The central metabolism change during thermo-evolution is associated with a change in the proteostasis of E. coli. After completing his Ph.D. in 2019, he joined Dr. Vyacheslav Labunskyy at Boston University as a Postdoc. Where he worked on understanding the longevity signature of Saccharomyces cerevisiae using Riboseq and RNA seq analysis. In 2020, he moved to RPI, Troy to work with Prof. Mattheos Koffas for his next PostDoc. Where he worked on cloning and characterization of biosynthetic gene clusters (BGCs) from the gut microbiome.
In 2023, he joins Prof. Gregory Stephanopoulos at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology as a Postdoc. His current research focuses on engineering oleaginous yeast (Yarrowia lipolytica) to improve carbon utilization pathways to improve the yield of high-value chemicals like alkane and biofuel.
Joanne Keene Kelleher grew up in Kentucky where she developed a strong interest in biomedical research. She had the great fortune to be mentored as a student by Helmut Gordon, Professor of Pharmacology at the University of Kentucky.
She studied chemistry at St. Louis University (B.S. 1969) and Biological Sciences at Boston University (PhD 1976) where her PhD advisor was Lynn Margulis. In the Margulis she was exposed to the intense narrow-minded thinking of prominent molecular and evolutionary biologists of the day who dismissed the endosymbiotic origin of eucaryotic cells. Fortunately, protein and DNA sequencing arrived a few years later to reveal the importance of endosymbiosis as an evolutionary mechanism that created eucaryotic cells.
While in graduate school she saw great opportunity to advance biomedical research using computers to model biochemical and physiological processes. As a postdoctoral student she worked with Barbara E. Wright at Harvard who pioneered computer models of cellular enzymatic pathways to predict developmental outcomes. Unleashing the power of the digital computer to models biochemical pathways was exciting but frustrating as the cost of computer time limited the number of hypotheses that could be tested.
In 1978 she was appointed as Assistant Professor of Physiology at George Washington University Medical School in Washington DC. At GW she established a laboratory in Metabolic Physiology. An important goal of the laboratory was to develop and test computer aided mathematical models of metabolic pathways. The requirement to test a model against experimental data led to a strong focus on isotopic tracer methodology. Key methodologies developed by the laboratory included a radioisotope method, "Acetate CO2 Ratios" which probed the anaplerotic functions of the TCA cycle. Moving to stable isotopes a key methodology was "Isotopomer Spectral Analysis" a nonlinear regression method to quantified polymer biosynthesis. This approach and was especially useful for de novo lipogenesis and the ability to estimate reductive carboxylation as a pathway from glutamine to lipids.
Since 2000 she has been affiliated with the Metabolic Engineering group directed by Professor Gregory Stephanopoulos in the Chemical Engineering Department at MIT. At MIT, a major goal to further the applications engineering methodologies to human metabolic research and human nutrition.
Job Titles:
- Professor of Chemical Engineering and Biotechnology
After graduation from NTUA he continued his studies in the United States. In 1975 he obtained his M.S. from the University of Florida and, three years later, his Ph.D. degree from the University of Minnesota. Professors Arnold Fredrickson and Rutherford Aris were his doctoral mentors. His professional career started in 1978 as Assistant Professor at Caltech where he was promoted in 1984 to the rank of Associate Professor with tenure. In 1985, Gregory Stephanopoulos moved to MIT as Professor of Chemical Engineering. He was Bayer Professor between 2000 and 2006, when he was appointed to the W. H. Dow Professorship of Chemical Engineering and Biotechnology. From 1990 to 1997 he served as Associate Director of the Biotechnology Process Engineering Center (BPEC) at MIT. Since 1997, he has served as Lecturer on Surgery and Bioengineering for Harvard University at the Massachusetts General Hospital, while he spent the academic year 2006-2007 as Visiting Professor at the ETH Zurich.
The professional career of Professor Stephanopoulos is underscored by his prolific scientific production: he is the co-author of a book and the editor of five other titles, while he has written or co-authored more than 430 papers and is co-inventor of more than 50 patents. During his tenure, he has trained and supervised more than 150 Graduate and Post-Doctoral students; he presently serves on the Editorial Boards of 12 scientific journals (see CV for full list) and currently serves as Editor-in Chief of Metabolic Engineering (since 2003) and co-Editor-in-Chief of Current Opinion in Biotechnology (since 2010). Throughout his career he has served on the Advisory Boards of numerous Panels and Scientific Advisory Boards of government, academic and industrial organizations. Presently he serves on the Advisory Board of the Swiss NSF for National Centers for Competence in Research (NCCR), the Delft Process Technology Institute (DPTI), the University of Illinois Institute for Genomic Biology, the Board of Directors of the International Chemical Reaction Engineering (ISCRE), and the Institute for Systems Biology (ISB).
The importance of his outstanding research was highlighted in 30 named Lectureships (see below). During the years, Professor Stephanopoulos received many honors (see full list below). Among others, in 2010 he received the George Washington Carver Award for Innovation in Industrial Biotechnology and the ACS E. V. Murphree Award. From AIChE he received the R.H. Wilhelm Award (2001), the Founders award (2007) and the William Walker Award (2014). In 2011 he received the Eni Prize in Renewable and non-Conventional Energy, in 2013 the John Fritz Medal from the American Association of Engineering Societies, in 2016 the Eric and Sheila Samson Prime Minister's Prize for Innovation in Alternative Fuels and in 2017 the Novozymes Award for Excellence in Biochemical and Chemical Engineering. Professor Stephanopoulos was elected in 2003 to the US National Academy of Engineering and in 2011 as Corresponding Member of the Academy of Athens. He has Honorary degrees from the Danish Technical University and NTUA. In 2016 he served as President of the American Institute of Chemical Engineers.
Job Titles:
- Visiting Doctoral Student
Xun was born and raised in Jiangsu, China. He received his bachelor and master degree from Nanjing Forestry University (NJFU) in 2017 and 2019. Since then, he joined the Biofuels & Biochemicals group at NJFU as a Ph.D. student, where he explored the biosynthesis of monoterpenes and implementing biosensors in engineering microbial cell factories. Outside the lab, he loves to cook, explore nature, and sports.
Since February 2022, he joined the Gregory Stephanopoulos lab as a visiting student, where he investigates non-oxidative glycolysis (NOG) pathway for carbon management through metabolic engineering of the oleaginous yeast Yarrowia lipolytica.