Former CSAIL graduate student Reshma Shetty has been busy since she left the Institute. The biological engineering PhD has founded a new company called Gingko BioWorks which is working hard to make the fabrication of biological building blocks a reality. She sits down for a detailed interview on her project, available here.
Shetty is carrying on some of the synthetic biology work begun during her degree. The group, which is headed by Randy Rettberg and Tom Knight, has done a great deal to advance the field of synthetic biology with up and coming students. One such initiative is IGEM, which sponsors an annual competition for university students to work on engineered solutions to biological challenges. A feature from PBS’s NewsHour on IGEM can be viewed here.