Events

Stanford SB hosts community events to help foster engagement between synthetic biology scholars across the University and beyond. 

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Upcoming Events

SB.Talk with Alice Ting (Genetics, Biology)

Talk Title: Engineering proteins to map and manipulate cells

When: 12 pm on Tuesday, Nov 19, 2024

Where: Shriram Tea Room 

Past Events

Biopigments Workshop Gallery Reception

When: 3:00 - 6:00 PM on Thursday, Nov 7, 2024

Where: Shriram Tea Room 

Stanford Events

Thanks to the support from the Office of the Vice Presidents’ Burt McMurtry Arts Initiative Fund, workshop participants from 14 different departments will be introduced to synthetic biology concepts to learn how to grow their fluorescent pigments to paint with. These paintings will be featured at an exhibition and reception on Thursday, November 7, from 3 – 6 PM, in the Shriram Tea Room at the Shriram Center for Bioengineering and Chemical Engineering. Refreshments and appetizers will be included.


SB.Talk with Xiaojie Qiu ( Stanford Genetics and CS)

Talk Title: Towards predictive spatiotemporal modeling of single cells over time and space.

When: 12 pm on Tuesday, Nov 5, 2024

Where: Shriram Tea Room 

SB Career Explorations: Twist Bioscience 

When: 11:30am - 1:30pm on Monday, October 28, 2024

Where: Shriram Tea Room 

What: Are you interested in learning more about working in the Synthetic Biology industry? This career exploration event with Twist Biosciences will bring their scientists on-site who can discuss their work across the Synthetic Biology field. There will also be food and games.


SB.Talk with Theo Roth ( Pathology)

Talk Title: A Unified Genetic Perturbation Language for Human Cellular Programming

When: 12 pm on Tuesday, Oct 22, 2024

Where: Shriram Tea Room 

SB.Talk with Felix Horns (Arc Institute and Genetics)

Talk Title: Harnessing RNA export to monitor and manipulate living cells.

When: 12 pm on Tuesday, Oct 8, 2024

Where: Shriram Tea Room 

Stanford SB's 1st Anniversary and Welcome Social

When: 3 pm on Tuesday, Sept 24 2024

Where: Shriram Tea Room 

Meet the Stanford iGEM team / Undergraduate Research Talk


When: 12:00 pm on Tuesday, July 2, 2024

Where: Shriram Tea Room

What: 2024 Stanford iGEM team will present their summer research project: facioscapulohumeral muscular dystrophy (fshd) treatment. iGEM, the International Genetically Engineered Machines competition, is an international event where teams create, test, and present their bioscience research projects involving genetic devices. The Stanford team is a group of undergraduate students working on developing a project through a needs-finding process and presenting at the annual Grand Jamboree in Paris in November 2024.

SB.Talks with Nowah Afangbedji (Porteus Lab)


When: 12:00 pm on Tuesday, June 18, 2024

Where: Shriram Tea Room 

Topic: Towards a Cure: The Prospects of β-Globin Gene Engineering in Eradicating β-Hemoglobinopathies


SB.Talks with Ann Thresher (SDOS, McCoy Family Center for Ethics)

When: 12:00 pm on Tuesday, May 21 2024

Where: Shriram Tea Room 

Topic: Killing Nature to Save It: Conservation, Synthetic Biology, and Ethical Extermination


BioE Department Colloquium: Caleb Bashor (Rice University)


When: 4:30 - 5:30 pm on Tuesday, June 4, 2024

Where: Shriram 104

Topic: Engineering synthetic regulatory systems in human cells


Stanford Frontiers in Synthetic Biology Distinguished Lecture: Sang Yup Lee


When: 2:00 - 3:15 pm on Wednesday, May 8, 2024

Where: Clark S360

Event Link 


Join us for a special synthetic biology lecture with Dr. Sang Yup Lee, Distinguished Professor of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering and Senior Vice President for Research at Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology (KAIST).

BioE Department Colloquium: Christ Voigt, MIT


When: 4:30 - 5:30 pm on Tuesday, May 7, 2024

Where: Shriram 104

Topic: Tracking Engineered Microbiomes from Space and Over Decades 


SynBio Solutions: Advancing Sustainable Pharmaceutical Manufacturing with Christina Smolke


When: 12:00 pm on Wednesday, April 24, 2024

Where: Mitchell Building, Room 350 (In person) and Virtual

Topic: Join us for an enlightening discussion with Dr. Christina Smolke, Co-founder and CEO of Antheia, as she explores the profound impact of synthetic biology on pharmaceutical biomanufacturing and global sustainability. Dr Smolke is a pioneer in synthetic biology and metabolic engineering, where she has over 20 years of experience. As Professor of Bioengineering and Chemical Engineering at Stanford University, her laboratory led the breakthrough research to engineer baker's yeast to produce some of the most complex and valuable medicines known. Under her leadership, Antheia's synthetic biology platform enables new possibilities for drug discovery and efficient, sustainable, transparent, and on-demand drug manufacturing at scale. Dr Smolke was recognized as one of the Transformative Leaders in Sustainability by Forbes in 2023.


SB.Talks with Xinyi Chen (Qi Lab)


When: 12:00 pm on Tuesday, April 23, 2024

Where: Shriram Tea Room 

Topic: Programmable macromolecule delivery with engineered cell-to-cell transfer

RVSP here


ChemE Department Colloquium: Katie Galloway, MIT


When: 4:30pm on Tuesday, April 15, 2024 (Refreshments served at 4pm)

Where: Shriram 104

Topic: Engineering high-precision, dynamic genetic control systems for cellular reprogramming

More information


SB.Talk with Jay Daniels, Founding Scientist, Moonlight Bio


When: 12:00 pm on Tuesday, April 9, 2024

Where: Shriram Tea Room 

Topic: Leveraging human T cell genomics to enhance T cell therapies

Summary: T cell therapies, particularly in solid tumors, have been hampered by numerous barriers that limit T cell function and preclude effective therapeutic responses. We turned to spontaneously occurring genetic events in human T cells, which have evolved to overcome similar obstacles as those faced by anti-cancer T cells. In this talk, I will highlight how these genetic events can dramatically augment therapeutic T cells, and the journey translating this work from academia into the formation of a new biotech company.


SB.Talk with Daesun Song (Lin Lab)


When: 12:00 pm on Tuesday, March 26, 2024

Where: Shriram Tea Room 

Topic: Development of Photoswitchable DARPins to control the activity of target proteins


SB.Talk with Renate Weizbauer (Carnegie Institution for Science)


When: 12:00 pm on Tuesday, March 12, 2024

Where: Shriram Tea Room 

Topic: Development of optical sensors to visualize complex carbohydrates in living cells


SB.Talk with Philip Ross (MycoWorks)


When: 12:00 pm on Tuesday, February 27, 2024

Where: Shriram Tea Room 

Topic: Have some fung: challenges and promises of synbio fungal utilities

RVSP here

SB.Talk with Tino Pleiner

When: 12:00 pm on Tuesday, Feb 13, 2024

Where: Shriram Tea Room 

Topic: Modulation of protein folding and degradation networks with intracellular nanobodies

SB.Talk with Nils Averesch


When: 12:00 pm on Tuesday, Jan 30, 2024

Where: Shriram Tea Room 

Topic: Microbial Biomanufacturing for Space and Earth Applications - from Single-Carbon Feedstocks to High-Performance Materials

Synthetic Neuroscience Forum with Michael Lin and Xiaojing Gao

Hosted by Sarafan ChEM-H, Bio-X, Wu Tsai Neurosciences Institute


When: 9:00 am - 10:00 am on Friday, January 26, 2024

Where: ChEM-H Neuro E241

Topic: Join us to learn more about the intersection of synthetic biology and neuroscience.  Michael Lin, Associate Professor of Neurobiology and Bioengineering; Xiaojing Gao, Assistant Professor of Chemical Engineering

More information

Biomolecular Ultrasound for Neural Imaging and Control with Mikhail Shapiro 

Hosted by Wu Tsai Neurosciences Institute


When: 12:00 pm - 1:00 pm on Thursday, January 18, 2024 

Where: E241, Gunn Rotunda, Stanford Neurosciences Building

Speaker: Mikhail Shapiro is a Professor of Chemical Engineering and Medical Engineering, an HHMI Investigator, and Director of the Center for Molecular and Cellular Medicine at Caltech. The Shapiro laboratory develops biomolecular technologies allowing cells to be imaged and controlled inside the body using sound waves and magnetic fields.

Event Information


Building Biology Symposium 

Hosted by Stanford Genetics and Developmental Biology


When: 8:30 am - 4:45 pm on Friday, January 19, 2024

Where: Berg Hall, Li Ka Shing Building

The Stanford Genetics and Developmental Biology Departments are pleased to invite trainees, faculty, and staff across the Stanford Biosciences and the greater Bay Area to register for their trainee-led "Building Biology" symposium. The symposium focuses on how biological systems can be interpreted, manipulated, and created across a variety of biological scales, ranging from single cells to whole organisms. We are pleased to feature a set of interdisciplinary speakers, including both Stanford faculty (Sergiu Pasca, Jennifer Brophy) and invited speakers from CalTech (Magda Zernicka-Goetz), UC Berkeley/ARC (Patrick Hsu), MIT (Kate Galloway), and University of Chicago (Neil Shubin). 

Event Information & RVSP


SB.Talk with Natalie G. Farny (Worcester Polytechnic Institute) & Aditya Kunjapur (University of Delaware)


When: 12:00 pm - 1:30 pm on Tuesday, Dec 12, 2023

Where: Shriram 104

Topic: Talks by Natalie G. Farny, Assistant Professor of Biology and Biotechnology, Worcester Polytechnic Institute and Aditya Kunjapur, Assistant Professor of Chemical & Biomolecular Engineering, University of Delaware.

Schedule 

12:00 – 12:40: Natalie Farny: SynBio in the Soil: Tools, Models, and Applications

12:50 – 1:30: Aditya Kunjapur: Thinking outside of the bioreactor: How the biosynthesis of rare building blocks can create new safeguards

Synthetic Neuroscience Forum with Drew Endy and Sergiu Pasca

Hosted by Sarafan ChEM-H, Bio-X, Wu Tsai Neurosciences Institute


When: 9:00 am on Friday, Dec 1, 2023

Where: John A. and Cynthia Fry Gunn Rotunda, Neurosciences Building

Topic: Join us to learn more about the intersection of synthetic biology and neuroscience. Talks by Drew Endy, Associate Professor of Bioengineering and Sergiu Pasca, Professor of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences will be followed by a community discussion.


SB.Talk with Brian Hie


When: 12:00 pm on Tuesday, Nov 28, 2023

Where: Shriram Tea Room 

Topic: Machine Learning Foundation Models for Synthetic Biology

SB.Talk with Jamie Blum (Sattely Lab)


When: 12:00 pm on Tuesday, Nov 14, 2023

Where: Shriram Tea Room 

Topic: Let's Talk Tolerance: Mapping dietary protein-immune cell interactions in the gut.


SB.Talk with Yulin Huang  (Mayalu Lab)


When: 12:00 pm on Tuesday, Oct 31, 2023

Where: Shriram Tea Room 

Topic: Biomolecular Control Circuit with Inherent Bi-stability is Applicable for Automatic Detection of Gut Infection


Synthetic Biology 2.0: the Dawn of a New Era with Huimin Zhao

Hosted by Chemical Engineering Colloquium


When: 4:30 pm on Monday, Oct 30, 2023

Where: Y2E2 111

Guest Speaker: Dr. Huimin Zhao, Steven L. Miller Chair of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (UIUC)

Topic: Synthetic biology aims to design novel or improved biological systems using engineering principles, which has broad applications in medical, chemical, food, and agricultural industries. Thanks to the rapid advances in DNA sequencing and synthesis, genome editing, artificial intelligence/machine learning (AI/ML), and laboratory automation in the past two decades, synthetic biology has entered a new phase of exponential growth. In this talk, I will highlight our recent work on the development of a self-driving biofoundry, AI/ML tools, and next-generation genome editing tools for synthetic biology applications. Examples include but are not limited to: (1) BioAutomata: a self-driving biofoundry for pathway engineering and protein engineering, (2) ECNet: an AI tool for enzyme engineering, (3) CLEAN: an AI tool for enzyme function prediction, and (4) zCRISPR-Cas12a: an engineered genome editing system with high efficiency and specificity. 


SB.Talk with Kyle G. Daniels


When: 12:00 pm on Tuesday, Oct 17, 2023

Where: Shriram Tea Room 

Topic: High-throughput re-wiring of immune cell signaling to control function

SB.Talk with Michael C. Jewett


When: 12:00 pm on Tuesday, September 19, 2023

Where: Shriram Tea Room 

Topic: Can synthetic biology help save our planet? a discussion on synthetic biology for sustainability


SB.Talk with Jonathan Calles (b.next)


When: 12:00 pm on Tuesday, September 5, 2023

Where: Shriram Tea Room

Topic: Routinizing synthetic biology by (routinely) building synthetic cells


SB.Talk with Nick Kalogriopoulos (Ting Lab)


When: 12:00 pm on Tuesday, August 22, 2023

Where: Shriram Tea Room

Topic: Programmable synthetic GPCRs for customized antigen recognition and cellular response


SB.Talk with Alex Vlahos (Gao Lab)


When: 12:00 pm on Tuesday, August 8, 2023

Where: Shriram Tea Room

Topic: Harnessing Protein-Protein Interactions for Programmable Control of Protein Secretion in Mammalian Cells

SB.Talk with Stanford iGEM team


When: 12:00 pm on Tuesday, July 25, 2023

Where: Shriram Tea Room

Meet the Stanford iGEM team: a summer project on biocontainment

SB.Talk with Jenn Brophy & Drew Endy


When: 12:00 pm on Tuesday, July 11, 2023

Where: Shriram Tea Room

Topic: Let’s get a NSF Biofoundry at Stanford

Abstract: The NSF has a call for proposals to fund up to four biofoundries across the US. Up to $24 million over six years. Jenn Brophy, Drew Endy, & Mike Jewett are leading the Stanford team competing for one such award. Come learn about the proposal while it is still being drafted!  Offer your thoughts, wishes, and advice! Full details about are the call online here.


When: Thursday, June 22 to Friday, June 23, 2023 

Where: Holiday Inn San Jose-Silicon Valley, San Jose, CA, USA

Topic: Come listen to leading experts in the field of mammalian synthetic biology and about the latest developments and applications in genome architecture, immunoengineering, regenerative medicine, organoids, and other topics that are shaping the future of the field. More info: http://mammalian-synbio.org/2023.

Register here

SB.Talk with Cyrus Knudsen (Covert Lab)


When: 12:00 pm on Tuesday, June 20, 2023

Where: Shriram Tea Room

Topic: Computer-aided design of engineered cells: vision and some highlighted challenges

Register here

Engineering Bacteria for Cancer Therapy with Tal Danino (Columbia University)


When: 3:30 pm on Friday, June 9, 2023

Where: Y2E2 Room 299

Guest Speaker: Tal Danino Associate Professor of Biomedical Engineering at Columbia University

Abstract: Synthetic biology is driving a new era of medicine through the genetic programming of living cells. One particular focus has been the engineering of bacteria as therapeutic delivery systems for cancer, where microbes colonize and release payloads within tumors. Here, genetic circuits are designed to enhance spatial and temporal control of microbial behavior for improved safety and efficacy. In this talk, Danino will highlight their recent efforts to develop bacterial biosensors, encapsulation strategies, and effective delivery systems for payloads ranging from cytotoxic to immunomodulatory agents. Danino will also discuss the progression from bacteria as single agents toward their engineered interactions with other programmable medicines using synthetic biology.

More information 

SB.Talk with Mariëlle van Kooten & Chris Mathy (Steinmetz Lab)


When: 4:00 pm on Thursday, June 8, 2023

Where: Shriram Tea Room

Topic: Integration over insulation: rethinking pathway-level engineering in human cells using mitochondrial genomes + group discussion on show to shape synthetic biology at Stanford University.

Register here


Synthetic Biology: Life Redesigned with James J. Collins (MIT)

Hosted by Chemical Engineering Colloquium

When: 4:00 pm - 5:00 pm on Monday, June 5, 2023

Where: Virtual (Zoom) 

Guest Speaker: James J. Collins is the Termeer Professor of Medical Engineering & Science and Professor of Biological Engineering at MIT, as well as a Member of the Harvard-MIT Health Sciences & Technology Faculty.

More information 

SB.Talk with Janina Tamborski (Brophy Lab)


When: 4:00 pm on Thursday, May 25, 2023

Where: Shriram Tea Room

Topic: Genetic circuits for plant synthetic biology

Fireside Chat with Austin Che, Ginkgo Bioworks

Hosted by Stanford Biotechnology Group


When: 6:00 pm - 7:00 pm on Monday, May 22, 2023

Where: RVSP for location

Guest Speaker: Austin Che, co-founder, Ginkgo Bioworks 

Interested in learning about what it takes to build the world's largest SynBio company and where the field is headed? Join Austin Che for a fireside chat.

More information 

Synthetic Biology in Space with Lynn Rothschild

Hosted by Stanford Student Space Initiative


When: 6:00 pm - 7:00 pm on Wednesday, May 17, 2023

Where: Lane History Corner 200-303

Guest Speaker: Lynn Rothschild, NASA Ames Research Center

More information 

Biomaker workshop with Jim Haseloff


When: 10:00 am - 3:00 pm on Friday, May 12, 2023

Where: Shriram Room 112

More information


SB.Talk with Jim Haseloff (Cambridge)


When: 4:00 pm on Thursday, May 11, 2023

Where: Shriram Tea Room

Guest Speaker: Jim Haseloff, Professor of Synthetic Biology, University of Cambridge

Topic: Open tools for engineering plants

Synthetic Biology for Sustainability Symposium

When: 10:00 am - 2:00 pm on Monday, May 1, 2023

Where: Vidalakis Dining Hall, Schwab Residential Center

Agenda


The Deans of the School of Medicine, the School of Engineering, and the Stanford Doerr School of Sustainability are hosting the Synthetic Biology for Sustainability Symposium on May 1, from 10am – 2pm at the Vidalakis Dining Hall, Schwab Residential Center.


SB.Talks with Phil Kyriakakis (Coleman Lab)


When: 4:00 pm on Thursday, April 27, 2023

Where: Shriram 262

Topic: Optogenetics, directed (de)evolution, and brain mapping


Seminar with Domitilla Delvecchio (MIT)


When: 3:00 - 4:00 pm on Thursday, April 20, 2023

Where: Building 530, Rm 127, 440 Escondido Mall

Topic: Context-aware mammalian synthetic biology for controller design 

More information on event

SB.Talks with Sasha Levy


When: 3:00 pm on Thursday, April 13, 2023

Where: Shriram Tearoom

Topic: A DNA programming environment


Stanford SB Community Event


When: 2:00 - 3:30 pm on Wednesday, March 8, 2023

Where: Shriram Tearoom


You're invited to our inaugural event to establish a Stanford-based community of researchers interested in synthesis and synthetic biology. Faculty, staff, postdocs and students are all invited. Please RVSP here.

Event Flyers