 |
Prof. Cheemeng Tan CV
Associate Prof., Biomedical Engineering, UC Davis, 2019
Assistant Prof., Biomedical Engineering, UC Davis, 2013
Ph.D., Biomedical Engineering, Duke, 2010
MS, High Performance Computing, Singapore-MIT Alliance 2002
BS, Engineering, National University of Singapore, 2001
Recent Honors and Awards
2021 NIGMS MIRA
2021 UC Davis Chancellor Fellow
2019 NIBIB Trailblazer Award
2018 Young Innovator, Cellular and Molecular Bioengineering
2018 Scialog Fellow
2015 Young Investigator Grant, Human Frontier Science Program
2012 Branco-Weiss Fellow, Society-in-Science ETH
2010 Lane Postdoctoral Fellowship, Lane Center, Carnegie Mellon University
|
 |
Dr. Ting Gong
Synthetic biology and molecular biotechnology
Ting received her bachelor of biotechnology degree from Nankai University in Tianjin, China. In her junior year of college, Ting joined Prof. Cunjiang Song lab, studying bioremediation of persistent organic pollutants and biosynthesis of value-added products. After she received a Ph.D. degree from Nankai University, Ting became a postdoc researcher in Prof. Thomas Wood lab at Penn State to study biofilm and souring control in energy fields via microbial quorum sensing regulation. In Prof. Tan lab, she is interested in leveraging synthetic biology to study the interaction between genetic regulatory networks and environment, as well as the temporal dynamics of biofilm. |
 |
Dr. Jiyoung Shim
Synthetic biology and molecular biotechnology
Ji-Young earned her B.E. and M.E. degree in chemical engineering from Seoul National University of Technology. She started her Ph.D. study at Illinois Institute of Technology and joined Prof. Wasan Lab studying oscillatory structural force to remove attached bacteria using a micellar nanofluid formulation. She then created a bio-sensing device to detect target DNAs using recombinant proteins as a postdoc in Prof. Kim lab at Western Kentucky University. In Prof. Tan lab, she is focusing on reconstituting cancer signaling pathways in vitro using droplet printing. |
 |
Dr. Shahid Khan
Microbial pathogenesis
Shahid obtained his Bachelor of Technology (B.Tech.) with specialization in Genetic Engineering from SRM University and Master of Science (M.Sc.) in Biotechnology from NIMS University. He was awarded various fellowships including the CSIR-NET fellowship (Government of India) to pursue his Ph.D. research, and other national fellowships like GATE, DBT-JRF, IIT-JAM. To pursue his doctoral research, he joined the research group of Prof. Jha lab at the Department of Biological Sciences, BITS-Pilani. He has an active research interest in the area of Microbiology with a major emphasis on Bacterial Pathogenesis and Host-Pathogen Interaction. During his Ph.D., he worked to gain mechanistic insights on various virulent mechanisms in bacteria, with a focus on T6SS (Type VI secretion system), and its role in bacterial Pathogenesis. In Prof. Tan lab, he is interested in designing artificial bacteria for therapeutic applications.
|
 |
Luis Eduardo Contreras Llano
Biochemistry, molecular, cellular, and developmental biology
Luis obtained a B.E. from the Polytechnic University of Tlaxcala (Mexico) and an M.S from the University of las Americas, Puebla (Mexico). For his M.S, he conducted research at the University of Murcia (Spain) where he studied the molecular and kinetic characteristics of an enzyme involved in the biosynthesis of plant pigments. His current research focuses on creating biomimetic systems, i.e. cell-free systems and artificial cells, for biotechnological applications.
|
 |
Conary Meyer
Biomedical Engineering
Conary obtained his B.S. in Bioengineering from Santa Clara University. While there he pursued several different projects ranging from biofuel engineering to exosome drug delivery systems. Upon graduation he took a fulltime research position in Prof. Drew Endy’s lab at Stanford University. During his time there he developed a method to clone thousands of individual plasmids in high throughput as well as helped with efforts to construct cells from the bottom-up. This introduced him to cell-free expression systems which inspired him to pursue a PhD in Tan lab to develop more versatile and robust expression systems. His current focus is on modifying cell free systems to produce membrane proteins.
|
 |
Tanner Henson
Biomedical Engineering
Tanner earned his Bachelor of Science in Engineering (B.S.E) in Biomedical Engineering from Arizona State University. At the start of his Sophomore year, he joined Prof. David Brafman’s lab which specializes in neurodegenerative diseases, pluripotent stem cells, and biomanufacturing. In his senior year, he completed an honors thesis, which was focused on optimizing a bioreactor system and cryopreservation protocol for human neural progenitor cells. His current research is focused on the use of artificial cells in gene therapy. (co-advised by Prof Aijun Wang)
|
 |
Ofelya Baghdasaryan
Biomedical Engineering
Ofelya obtained her B.S. in Biochemistry from University of Oklahoma. At the end of her freshman year, she joined Dr. Acar Handan’s lab as an undergraduate research assistant. She was involved in several ongoing research in the lab, with the most prominent one being a study of the formation mechanisms and characteristics of ovarian cancer spheroids, where she co-authored her first paper published in September 2020 in the Journal of Gynecologic Oncology. Prior to graduating from the University of Oklahoma, she completed an honors senior thesis under Dr. Handan’s supervision which was focused on the cell death mechanism of heat-treated OVCAR8 cells. She was twice nominated for an Honors Undergraduate Research Opportunity grant to carry individual research projects along with the collaborative research. Within the research scope, she studied Cathepsin B mediated cleavage of peptides for therapeutic usages in ovarian cancer research. Her current research focus in Dr. Tan’s lab is on designing artificial bacteria for breast cancer treatment by taking advantage of the operating principles of gene networks.
|
 |
Dhruva Adiga
Biochemical Engineering |
 |
Pin-Ru Lin
Biomedical Engineering |
 |
Constantine Yerocostas
Biomedical Engineering |
 |
Anton Block
Biomedical Engineering |
 |
Arielle Lazovsky
Biomedical Engineering |
