Members
Meet the team! Updated July 2024.
Principal Investigator
Andy Ellington
Andrew Ellington is the Fraser Professor of Biochemistry at the University of Texas at Austin. He is perhaps best known for the invention of the word "aptamer," but is now most involved in the development and evolution of artificial life, including nucleic acid operating systems that can function both in vitro and in vivo.
Postdoctoral Researchers
Kasia Dinkeloo
Kasia arrived at UT in 2018 as a Postdoc in the Lloyd Lab, working with Dr. Ellington and several other groups to build and test sensing/reporting machinery in plants. Kasia then joined the Ellington Lab and started a position as an assistant professor of practice within the Freshman Research Initiative (FRI), re-establishing a bioprospecting lab for undergraduate researchers. The Bioprospecting2.0 Lab's research focuses on the search for plastic-degrading microbes and enzymes from various environmental sources and conditions. Kasia enjoys working with the members of the Ellington lab to provide meaningful and authentic research experiences for a diverse group of undergraduate students from their first days on campus through their senior year (and beyond).
Sanchita Bhadra
Sanchita Bhadra engineers nucleic acids and proteins into molecular diagnostic devices for detection of infectious and metabolic diseases. Their focus is on early and accurate diagnostics not only for presetting therapeutic intervention in clinics but with a broader goal of making diagnostics more affordable and amenable for point-of-care application.
Satoshi Ishida
Satoshi Ishida completed his PhD in chemistry at the University of Tokyo under the supervision of Dr. Hiroaki Suga. He joined the Ellington lab early 2021 with the interest in engineering the translation machinery for better incorporation of unnatural amino acids using directed evolution. When not in the lab, he enjoys playing badminton and exploring the city of Austin.
Seunggyun Woo
Seunggyun Woo completed their Ph.D. at UST-KRIBB (University of Science and Technology-Korea Research Institute of Bioscience and Biotechnology) in 2022, specializing in synthetic biology. Building on this background, Seunggyun joined the Ellington Lab as a postdoctoral researcher in 2023. Seunggyun’s current research focuses on protein engineering, particularly on mRNA capping enzymes and RNA polymerases, utilizing synthetic gene circuits and structure-based deep learning models to develop systems for dynamic gene regulation in eukaryotic hosts.
Technical Staff
Bethany Perez
Bethany graduated from Louisiana Tech University with a BS in Biomedical Engineering in 2021. They are co-advised by Dr. Bryan Davies working with bacterial bloodstream delivery of small proteins. They joined the Ellington Lab in July 2024 with focuses on bacterial delivery of mRNA for mammalian expression. Bethany is applying to pursue a PhD with interests in gene-editing technologies. Outside of lab they enjoy teaching dance, taking their dog to the park, and trying out new run clubs around Austin.
Caty Tramont
Caty graduated from the University of Texas at Austin with a BSA in neuroscience. Their primary research revolves around expressing ion channels in yeast. Outside of lab, Caty enjoys playing video games, cooking, baking, music, and watching TV shows
Daniel Gutierrez
Daniel Gutierrez joined the Ellington Lab in June 2024. Currently Daniel assists in administrative work as well as pursuing research in machine-learning assisted pipelines for increasing the stability and function of enzymes and biosensors. They are interested in developing new tools to streamline the development of new synthetic proteins for uses in Medicine, Biomanufacturing, and other applications. In 2023 Daniel graduated with a B.S. in Computer Science and Molecular Biology from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. In their free time, you can find Daniel playing video games, reading fantasy novels, or playing ttrpgs.
Julie Bondy
Julie graduated from Trinity University in 2023 with a B.S. in Biology and Industrial Design and minor in Chinese. They joined Ellington Lab in January 2024. Alongside administrative work, they currently assist Daniel Acosta and Alia Clark-ElSayed with projects related to engineering enzymes for improved plastic biodegradation and screening GPCRs for novel agonists. In their free time, Julie enjoys hiking, traditional dancing, photography, and doing art—including sculpting and mosaics.
Michelle Mott
Graduate Students
Alia Clark-Elsayed
Alia Clark-ElSayed is currently pursuing my PhD in Cellular and Molecular Biology, co-advised by Andrew Ellington and Edward Marcotte. Their research focuses on developing biosensors for the detection of small molecules as well as screening GPCRs for novel agonists of therapeutic potential. Alia is interested in leveraging protein engineering and data science to improve human health.
Prior to this, Alia worked as an Applications Development Scientist at Inscripta. In this role, Alia developed new applications and expanded the current uses of their genome editing technology. Their work spanned both external and internal development projects, focusing on genome discovery and protein production. In 2021, Alia graduated from the University of Colorado Boulder with a B.A. in Cellular, Molecular, and Developmental Biology, and minors in Public Health and French. Outside of lab, Alia enjoys running, skiing, baking bread, and reading.
Ankur Annapareddy
Ankur graduated from UT Austin in 2018 with a B.S. in Chemical Engineering and a minor in Economics. Following graduation Ankur worked with Dr. Jimmy Gollihar at the US Army Research Lab - South. They are co-advised by Dr. Ilya Finkelstein and their research focuses on studying the fitness landscape of viral glycoproteins. Outside of the lab Ankur enjoy doing anything active, cooking/baking, reading, playing video and board games, and exploring new places.
Arno Gundlach
Arno Gundlach is a second year microbiology PhD student interested in genome expansion and enzyme engineering. Arno completed their BS in biology at Florida State University in the spring of 2023. Outside of the lab Arno enjoys playing sports and philosophy.
Charlie Johnson
Charlie received their B.Sc. in Biomedical Engineering from Texas A&M and joined the Ellington Lab as a graduate student in the Biomedical Engineering program in 2021. Their research focuses on using computational and experimental techniques to study and engineer bacterial transcription factors for biosensing with applications in pharmaceutical manufacturing and diagnostics. Outside of research Charlie enjoys watching live music and playing tabletop roleplaying games with friends.
Clayton Kosonocky
Clay earned his B.S. in Chemical & Biological Engineering from the University of Colorado in 2020. He then worked as a research associate at Beyond Meat for two years before joining the Ellington lab as a graduate student in Biochemistry in 2022. Clay's research focuses on exploring chemical and protein deep learning models. His primary projects focus on translating chemical structures to labels corresponding to their functionality in an effort to simultaneously infuse chemical representation models with scientific knowledge and aid in novel small molecule discovery. Clay is the co-founder of the BioML Society at UT Austin, through which he has run a world-wide protein design competition and a seminar series on Biology & Machine Learning. Outside of research Clay enjoys climbing, reading, and surfing when near water.
Dalton Towers
Dalton is a graduate student in the chemical engineering department, co-advised with the Georgiou lab. Their research focuses on antibody repertoire analysis in order to understand humoral immune responses to disease and vaccination. Outside of the lab Dalton enjoy running, hiking, playing the trumpet, and caring for too many succulents."
Daniel Acosta
Daniel Acosta earned their B.S. in microbiology from the University of Arizona where they worked on a variety of research projects including analysis of venom proteins importance in the parasitic wasp Leptopilina boulardi and also the biosynthesis of polyketides by desert endophyte fungi from the genus Alternaria specifically chlorinated curvularins. When Daniel’s not in the lab they enjoy being outside backpacking, running, and rock climbing. Currently at UT Austin, Daniel works on a variety of projects related to the biological depolymerization of plastics at the enzyme and organism level. Daniel is co-advised with Dr. Hal Alper and complete research in collaboration with both labs.
Eric Szmuc
Eric received his B.S. in Biochemistry from East Tennessee State University in 2018 where he did research with integrin inhibition of macrophage adhesion during models of inflammation. He joined the Ellington and Keitz lab’s in 2020 and since transitioned to working with electroactive biomaterials with a focus on bacterially produced conductive nanowires. He is currently in his 5th year of PhD in biochemistry. Outside of lab Eric enjoys mountain biking and backpacking whenever there’s mountain around, woodworking, and everything under the sun that gets his body moving. He is also a combat veteran of the USMC, serving 2 tours to Afghanistan operating in sniper and team leader infantry roles.
Joshua Lutgens
Joshua Lutgens is a 5th year graduate student in the cell and molecular biology program. They are a co-mentored student between the Ellington lab and the Keatinge-Clay lab. Joshua’s work is to leverage synthetic biology tools and techniques to push the boundaries of polyketide synthases. The majority of their research has been exploring combinatorial engineering of type 1 modular polyketide synthases. These huge multi-enzyme complexes are like chemical assembly lines made up of distinct genomic segments that Joshua, leveraging synthetic biology, can rearrange, testing the limits of lego-ization of modules. This culminates in the goal of custom chemical biosynthesis. Joshua’s current interests are in utilizing a biosensor gene circuit to perform some adaptive laboratory evolution on polyketide producing E. Coli to improve titers to more appreciable quantities.
Phuoc (Jaydin) Ngo
Phuoc Ngo (or Jaydin) is currently a 5th year pursuing PhD in Organic Chemistry. He is co-advised by Professor Eric Anslyn and Professor Andrew Ellington. His research involves in the expansion of genetic alphabet (DNA) and the genetic code (unnatural amino acids) by combining approaches from synthetic organic chemistry and synthetic biology. Outside of lab, Jaydin enjoys lifting heavy weights and listening to K-pop.
Steven Zilko
Steven Zilko earned his B.S. in Microbiology from the University of Maryland, College Park in 2019. He then aided the development of preclinical adenovector vaccines and CAR T cell therapeutics as a research assistant at Precigen Inc. for two years. He is currently a 3rd year Biochemistry PhD student. He joined the Ellington and Keitz labs in 2022, and currently works on bio-based purification of rare earth elements due to their increasing relevance to modern renewable and green energy technologies. Outside of his research, Steven enjoys learning new cooking techniques, weightlifting, and trying to make every sentence he utters funny to someone (mostly himself).
Undergraduate Students
Ethan Creed
Ethan Creed is an undergraduate biochemistry student at the University of Texas at Austin. Ethan joined the Ellington Lab in August 2023 under his advisor, Charlie Johnson. Ethan's research centers on developing multiplex biosensors for applications in both industry and healthcare. With his free time, Ethan enjoys playing the guitar, running, and exploring Austin!
John Halphen Jr.
John Halphen Jr. is an undergraduate Neuroscience student at the University of Texas at Austin. John joined the Ellington Lab in January 2023 under their advisor, Dr. Bhadra. John’s research involves developing and demonstrating point-of-care disease diagnostics that detect multiple nucleic acid target sequences simultaneously. When John has free time, they enjoy weight lifting, strategy games, and live music.
Meredith Rillera
Meredith Rillera is currently pursuing a B.S. in Medical Laboratory Science at UT Austin. Meredith joined the Ellington Lab in February 2024, where they are advised by Dr. Bhadra. Meredith’s research focuses on using bio-based methods to create reagents for low-cost diagnostics. Outside the lab, they enjoy reading, exploring the city, and playing with animals.
Sandy Nguyen
Sandy is a fourth-year undergraduate biology student who joined the Ellington Lab in January 2022. Her research has centered around polymerase engineering; most recently, she is investigating how well some polymerase variants can incorporate non-natural nucleobases under the guidance of Dr. Bhadra. Outside the lab, she enjoys playing clarinet, baking, and spending time outdoors.
Alumni
Raul Treviño
Liana Chen
Amanda Hedges
Anirudh Sudarshan
Danny Diaz
Colleen Mulvihill
Josh Lutgens
Hannah Cole
Brice Hendrickson
Kevin Huang
Mason Galliver
Simon Doelsnitz
Inyup Paik
Vidhya Annem
Aly Ladak
Vylan Nguyen
Anastasia Kulikova
Elizabeth Gardner
Jie Li
Hongyuan Lu
Tim Riedel
Stella Wang
Sarah Stofel
James J Guerra
Hannah Do
Jose Cardona
Tushar Suvra Bhowmick
Armin Nourani
Jared Ellefson
Erhu Xiong
Sandeep Panda
Ella Watkins
Yu Sherry Jiang
Yan Du
Yousef Okasheh
Bijoy Desai
Peter Allen
Dilek Cam
Alison Moss
Carolyn Hargrave
Bingling Li
Nick Marshall
Beth Marshall
Shu Jun Zhen
Barrett Morrow
Raghav Shroff
Ted Rodriguez
Pia Sen
Jonny Riggs
Liang Wang
Yolanda G. Garcia Huante
Ross Thyer
Michelle Byrom
Isaac Donnell
Cody McLeland
Chad Wang
Austin Cole
Alexa Vulgamott
Jimmy Gollihar
Adam Meyer
Michael Ledbetter
Petra Bachanova
Shaunak Kar
Kamyab Javanmardi
Jonghyeok Shin