Meet the Editors

Hal Alper, Founding Editor

University of Texas at Austin, USA

Dr. Hal Alper is Z. D. Bonner Professor of Chemical Engineering at The University of Texas at Austin.  He earned his PhD in Chemical Engineering from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 2006 and was a postdoctoral research associate at the Whitehead Institute for Biomedical Research from 2006-2008, and at Shire Human Genetic Therapies from 2007-2008.  Dr. Alper also serves on the Graduate Studies Committee for the Cell and Molecular Biology Department and the Biochemistry Department.  He is currently the Principal Investigator of the Laboratory for Cellular and Metabolic Engineering at The University of Texas at Austin. His lab focuses on metabolic and cellular engineering in the context of biofuel, biochemical, and biopharmaceutical production in an array of model host organisms.  His research focuses on applying and extending the approaches of related fields such as synthetic biology, systems biology, and protein engineering.  Dr. Alper has published over 110 articles and 8 book chapters. 

Dr. Alper is the recipient of the Camille and Henry Dreyfus New Faculty Award (2008), Texas Exes Teaching Award (2009), DuPont Young Investigator Award (2010), Office of Naval Research Young Investigator Award (2011), UT Regents’ Outstanding Teaching Award (2012), Biotechnology and Bioengineering Daniel I.C. Wang Award (2013), Jay Bailey Young Investigator Award (2014), Camille Dreyfus Teacher-Scholar Award (2014), Society for Industrial Microbiology and Biotechnology Young Investigator Award (2015), ACS BIOT Young Investigator Award (2016), UT-Austin Emerging Inventor of the Year Award (2016) and AIChE Allan P. Colburn Award (2018), Biochemical Engineering Journal Young Investigator Award (2019), and Edith and Peter O'Donnell Award in Engineering (2019). He was elected as a Fellow to the American Institute for Medical and Biological Engineering in 2018 and to the National Academy of Inventors in 2019.

Matthew Chang, Editor-in-Chief

National University of Singapore, Singapore

Matthew Chang is Associate Professor in Biochemistry in the Yong Loo Lin School of Medicine at the National University of Singapore (NUS), and Director of the Singapore Consortium for Synthetic Biology (SINERGY), Wilmar-NUS Corporate Laboratory (Wil@NUS) and NUS Synthetic Biology for Clinical and Technological Innovation (SynCTI). His research interests lie in the development of biological systems that perform programmable functions. His scientific contributions have been recognized with international honours and awards, including the Scientific and Technological Achievement Award from U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, and featured in leading media outlets worldwide. He serves as an editor and an editorial board member for over 15 biotechnology journals. He is a strong advocate of promoting interdisciplinary science that marries engineering, biological, medical and social sciences through education and public science outreach. http://SynCTI.org/.

Laura Jarboe, Associate Editor

Iowa State University, USA

Laura Jarboe is an Associate Professor of Chemical and Biological Engineering at Iowa State University and former Chair of ISU’s Interdepartmental Microbiology Graduate program. Her research program generally focuses on engineering robust microbial cell factories in order to increase the economic viability of bio-production platforms, often involving engineering of the cell membrane and strategies to improve utilization of biomass-derived monomers. Jarboe’s lab is also involved in the characterization of microbial attachment and microbial utilization of anhydrosugars.

Michael Krogh Jensen, Associate Editor

Technical University of Denmark, Denmark

Dr. Michael Krogh Jensen is coordinator of MIAMi and is senior researcher and Co-Principal Investigator of the section for Synthetic Biology Tools in Yeast at the Center for Biosustainability at the Technical University of Denmark. He obtained his PhD in molecular biology from University of Copenhagen, Denmark, in 2007, and obtained independent funding for his post-doctoral research at University of Copenhagen, Max-Planck Institute in Cologne, Germany, and Stanford University, USA, from 2008-2012. Since 2013 he has managed and co-directed research projects in development of synthetic biology tools for cell factory development, with special attention to engineering of biosensors and methods for advanced genome engineering and evolution-guided optimization of cell factories. He has co-authored 37 peer-reviewed papers with more than 1900 citations, and is co-inventor of 1 patent application. He is currently supervising 5 PhD students and mentoring 4 post.docs. His key research interest is within the development of synbio engineering tools to perform high-throughput genome engineering, screening, and evolution-guided optimization of living cells for the production of human therapies.

Huimin Yu, Associate Editor

Tsinghua University, China

Professor Huimin YU received her Ph.D. at Dept. of Chem. Eng., Tsinghua University, PR China in 2001. She was promoted as a professor at Tsinghua University in 2012. Her research mainly focuses on Engineering biology, Industrial biocatalysis and Bio-nanotechnology. Current efforts especially emphasize to 1) evolve new/improved biocatalysts by synthetic biology, protein/metabolic engineering and applied bioinformatics; 2) develop efficient bioprocess; and 3) fabricate metal nanoparticles via biotemplate and apply the bio-nano couples in different fields. Projects on biomaufacturing of acrylamide, biosurfactant, hyaluronic acid, and Fe-Ni(Cu)@M13 micro electrolysis system are highlighted. She achieved the honor of National Excellent Doctoral Dissertation in 2003. In 2005-2006, she worked in MIT, USA as a visiting scholar. In 2007, she won the honor of “Beijing Nova (A) in Science and Technology”. In 2008, she was selected into the “Program for New Century Excellent Talents in University”. In 2010 and 2013, she achieved the award of “Outstanding Young Contributor in Science and Technology” and “Award for Technological Invention (2nd prize)”, of China Petroleum and Chemical Industry Association, respectively. In 2017, she won the "Award for Technological Invention (2nd prize)" of MOE, China.