News & EventsDepartment Events
Events
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Oct29
EVENT DETAILS
lessThe Department of Chemical and Biological Engineering is pleased to welcome guest speaker José L. Avalos, PhD., from Princeton University to present his seminar:
"Building smarter microbial factories with spatial and temporal controls using organelle engineering and optogenetics."
Engineered microorganisms are powerful cell factories for producing fuels, chemicals, pharmaceuticals, and other valuable products. However, achieving commercially viable titers, yields, and productivities remains challenging. Spatial and temporal control of engineered metabolism offers promising strategies to overcome these limitations.
In the first part of my talk, I will present advances in compartmentalizing biosynthetic pathways within yeast mitochondria and engineered biomolecular condensates. I will discuss how targeting pathways to mitochondria and manipulating mitochondrial morphology can enhance chemical production, as well as strategies to engineer synthetic condensates that recruit enzymes, small molecules, and biological membranes to channel metabolic flux and exploit membrane functions.
In the second part, I will highlight our pioneering work using optogenetics to dynamically regulate microbial metabolism. Light provides tunable, reversible, and programmable control, enabling new approaches to fermentation automation and optimization. I will describe optogenetic systems that improve chemical production by controlling microbial growth and metabolism, overcoming limited light penetration in high-density bioreactors, and dynamically regulating population composition in microbial consortia.
Together, these advances demonstrate how integrating spatial and temporal control can establish a new paradigm in metabolic engineering, expanding the capabilities of microbial cell factories.
José L. Avalos, Ph.D.
Associate Professor of Chemical and Biological Engineering, The Omenn-Darling Bioengineering Institute, and The Andlinger Center for Energy and the Environment of Princeton UniversityJosé Avalos earned a B.E. in chemical engineering from Universidad Iberoamericana in Mexico City and an MSc in biochemical research from Imperial College in London. He then received a Ph.D. in biochemistry and biophysics from Johns Hopkins University. He conducted postdoctoral research at The Rockefeller University on molecular neuroscience, and then at MIT/Whitehead Institute, in the Department of Chemical Engineering on metabolic engineering and synthetic biology. He has been a faculty member at Princeton University since 2015, where he leads a research group focused on the use of biotechnology to address challenges in renewable energy, sustainable manufacturing, the environment, and human health. He has received several awards, including the Damon Runyon Cancer Research Fellowship, the NIH Ruth L. Kirschstein National Research Service Award, the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation Research Fellowship Award, the Pew scholarship, the NSF CAREER Award, the Camille Dreyfus Teacher-Scholar Award, the HHMI Gilliam award, and the ACS BIOT Young Investigator Award.
TIME Thursday, October 29, 2026 at 9:30 AM - 10:45 AM
LOCATION LR4, Technological Institute map it
CONTACT Olivia Wise olivia.wise@northwestern.edu EMAIL
CALENDAR McCormick-Chemical and Biological Engineering (ChBE)
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Nov5
EVENT DETAILS
lessMore details to come.
TIME Thursday, November 5, 2026 at 9:30 AM - 10:45 AM
LOCATION LR4, Technological Institute map it
CONTACT Olivia Wise olivia.wise@northwestern.edu EMAIL
CALENDAR McCormick-Chemical and Biological Engineering (ChBE)
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Nov12
EVENT DETAILS
lessMore details to come.
TIME Thursday, November 12, 2026 at 9:30 AM - 10:45 AM
LOCATION LR4, Technological Institute map it
CONTACT Olivia Wise olivia.wise@northwestern.edu EMAIL
CALENDAR McCormick-Chemical and Biological Engineering (ChBE)
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Nov19
EVENT DETAILS
lessThe Department of Chemical and Biological Engineering is pleased to present a seminar with guest speaker Carolyn Mills from the University of California, Santa Barbara. The talk is titled:
"Opening the black box: cell-free systems for the dissecting challenging biology under controlled conditions"
Some of the most interesting biology is also the hardest to study—proteins from anaerobic microbes are difficult to produce and characterize, while protein assemblies such as biomolecular condensates can disassemble when cells are lysed and cellular context is lost. In both cases, the standard workflow of expressing a protein in a living cell and then isolating it can obscure the very behavior we wish to study. Cell-free protein synthesis (CFPS) offers a different approach: an open, tunable reaction environment in which proteins are made on demand, with direct access to the reaction and control over its conditions. In this talk, I will describe how we are applying CFPS to answer two different biological questions. First, I will describe our work developing anaerobic CFPS to establish gene-to-function relationships in non-model anaerobes, including fluorescent reporters that work without oxygen and miniaturized reactions that enable automated, high-throughput screening in the NSF ExFAB Biofoundry. Second, I will discuss how we are using CFPS to study bacterial protein condensates, comparing their behavior across in vitro buffers, living cells, and CFPS to overcome the limits of current approaches.
Dr. Carolyn Mills (she/they) is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Bioengineering at the University of California, Santa Barbara (UCSB). Carolyn’s research at UCSB focuses on molecular engineering of proteins that control spatial organization in biological systems, with applications in plastic remediation and oral vaccine delivery. Carolyn completed her B.S. in Chemical Engineering in 2013 at UCSB, and her PhD in Chemical Engineering in 2019 at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, working in Professor Bradley Olsen’s lab on self-assembly and high-throughput processing of fusion protein materials. During her PhD, Carolyn was supported by an NSF Graduate Research Fellowship. Carolyn completed her postdoctoral work with Professor Danielle Tullman-Ercek at Northwestern University, researching self-assembling protein nanoreactors. During her time at Northwestern, Carolyn was recognized by the Chemical and Biological Engineering Department’s Distinguished Postdoctoral Service Award. At UCSB, Carolyn is actively involved in collaborations at both the NSF ExFAB Biofoundry and BioPACIFIC Materials Innovation Platform. Carolyn is a recipient of the Gloria Moy Petersen Fellowship in the UCSB Society of Hellman Fellows and the Department of Energy Early Career Program award.
TIME Thursday, November 19, 2026 at 9:30 AM - 10:45 AM
LOCATION LR4, Technological Institute map it
CONTACT Olivia Wise olivia.wise@northwestern.edu EMAIL
CALENDAR McCormick-Chemical and Biological Engineering (ChBE)
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Nov20
EVENT DETAILS
lessDissertation, PhD Final Exam, and change of grade forms due to TGS for Fall PhD candidates
TIME Friday, November 20, 2026
CONTACT Office of the Registrar nu-registrar@northwestern.edu EMAIL
CALENDAR University Academic Calendar
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Nov25
EVENT DETAILS
lessThanksgiving Vacation begins at 6:00 PM (No classes, University offices closed)
TIME Wednesday, November 25, 2026
CONTACT Office of the Registrar nu-registrar@northwestern.edu EMAIL
CALENDAR University Academic Calendar
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Nov30
EVENT DETAILS
lessFall Classes Resume
TIME Monday, November 30, 2026
CONTACT Office of the Registrar nu-registrar@northwestern.edu EMAIL
CALENDAR University Academic Calendar
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Dec3
EVENT DETAILS
lessMore details to come.
TIME Thursday, December 3, 2026 at 9:30 AM - 10:45 AM
LOCATION LR4, Technological Institute map it
CONTACT Olivia Wise olivia.wise@northwestern.edu EMAIL
CALENDAR McCormick-Chemical and Biological Engineering (ChBE)
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Dec5
EVENT DETAILS
lessFall classes end
TIME Saturday, December 5, 2026
CONTACT Office of the Registrar nu-registrar@northwestern.edu EMAIL
CALENDAR University Academic Calendar
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Dec7
EVENT DETAILS
lessFall Exams begin
TIME Monday, December 7, 2026
CONTACT Office of the Registrar nu-registrar@northwestern.edu EMAIL
CALENDAR University Academic Calendar
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Dec12
EVENT DETAILS
lessFall exams end
TIME Saturday, December 12, 2026
CONTACT Office of the Registrar nu-registrar@northwestern.edu EMAIL
CALENDAR University Academic Calendar
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Dec12
EVENT DETAILSmore info
lessThe ceremony will take place on Saturday, December 12 in Pick-Staiger Concert Hall, 50 Arts Circle Drive.
TIME Saturday, December 12, 2026 at 4:00 PM - 6:00 PM
LOCATION Pick-Staiger Concert Hall map it
CONTACT Andi Joppie andi.joppie@northwestern.edu EMAIL
CALENDAR McCormick School of Engineering and Applied Science