Plants are the most prolific chemical ‘plants,’ providing most of the food, fiber, and natural remedies necessary to support a healthy and prosperous society
We combine our training in Chemical Engineering with techniques from Systems and Synthetic Biology to understand the metabolism of plants, as a first step in creating novel crop varieties that use resources more efficiently and are better adapted to an ever-changing environment.
We develop biomolecular and computational tools and use them to study plant growth. We are particularly interested in learning how cells acquire specialized functions, and how these specialized cells exchange metabolites and information for the benefit of the whole organism.