The people behind the science.

Gary's research focuses on engineering beneficial gut bacteria to act as living medicines. He aims to better understand how bacteria can be used to detect disease, regulate immune responses, and deploy therapeutic payloads on command.

Brayon completed his PhD at Stanford in Ami Bhatt's lab, where he developed a novel sequencing method to study protein synthesis in stool samples and designed computational approaches to analyze this new data type. As a postdoc at Berkeley Lab in Nikos Kyrpides' group, he developed computational approaches for analyzing phage genomes. He uses bioinformatics and machine learning to identify microbial genes and molecules with therapeutic potential.

Kangsan earned his Ph.D. in bioengineering from KAIST, where he engineered gut commensal bacteria through systems and synthetic biology approaches for potential therapeutic applications. His current research focuses on in situ engineering of gut microbial communities and discovering genetic elements that enable this work. When he's not in the lab, you can find him biking through the streets of the Bay Area.

Minjoo is a postdoctoral researcher in the Ronda Lab, contributing to ongoing projects in microbial genetics and microbiome editing tool development.

Santiago is a postdoctoral researcher jointly appointed between the Ronda Lab and the Doudna Lab at the Innovative Genomics Institute. His research focuses on phage defense systems and infant microbiome engineering, working at the intersection of CRISPR biology and microbial ecology.

Francesca earned her Ph.D. in neuroscience studying the microbiome-gut–brain axis in epilepsy. Her current research investigates how the microbiome influences host neurological and immune signaling, using systems and synthetic biology approaches such as microbiome engineering and multi-omics. These approaches aim to identify microbial genes and pathways involved in host–microbe communication.

Patricia is a postdoctoral researcher jointly appointed between the Ronda Lab and the Braverman Lab at the Innovative Genomics Institute. Her research focuses on developing reporter systems for studying host-microbiome interactions and immune modulation.

Bingliang is a postdoctoral researcher jointly appointed between the Ronda Lab and the Rubin Lab at the Innovative Genomics Institute. His research focuses on extracellular contractile injection systems (eCIS) for targeted protein delivery to bacteria, expanding the toolkit for microbiome engineering.

Pia received a B.S. in Microbiology from the University of Washington in 2021, where they performed genetic manipulation in Patescibacteria in Dr. Joseph Mougous' lab. Beginning as a graduate student in the Plant and Microbial Biology department in 2024, Pia works under the joint mentorship of the Ronda, Cress and Banfield labs on developing tools for targeted editing in various microbiomes and their applications.

Tsedenia earned her B.S. in Biology from New York University Abu Dhabi, where she studied the oral microbiome-metabolome profiles of obesity at Dr. Aashish Jha's lab. She is currently a Microbiology PhD student in the Banfield Lab and a collaborating graduate student in the Ronda Lab.

Zhixiang received his M.S. in Biomedical Engineering from Duke University in 2023, where he conducted research on dynamics of transferable gene elements in Dr. Lingchong You's lab. Under Dr. Ronda's mentorship, Zhixiang is developing tools for targeted molecular delivery.

Natalee is developing a toolkit for efficient conjugative transfer of plasmids. Her research focuses on creating shuttle vectors optimized to conjugate with bacterial targets, advancing our understanding of horizontal gene transfer in microbial systems.

Bradley is particularly interested in studying the human microbiomes and understanding how microbiome editing may be used to develop personalized treatments for patients.