Group Members

Christopher V. Rao

Ray and Beverly Mentzer Professor
email: cvrao[at]illinois.edu

  • B.S. in Chemical Engineering at Carnegie Mellon University
  • Ph.D. in Chemical Engineering at University of Wisconsin, Madison with Prof. J. B. Rawlings
  • Postdoctoral research fellow at Howard Hughes Medical Institute, University of California, Berkeley with Prof. A. P. Arkin

Hannah Walukiewicz

Research Scientist
email: hannarao[at]illinois.edu

Sujit Jagtap

Research Scientist, 2022-
email: jagtap[at]illinois.edu

  • Research focus - Engineering non-model yeast for the production of fuels and chemicals, Regulation of metabolism in yeast
  • Ph.D. in Chemical Engineering, Konkuk University, Seoul, South Korea, 2010 - 15
  • Visiting Scholar, ChBE, UIUC, 2012 - 14

Ashwini Bedekar

Postdoctoral Research Associate, 2018-
email: bedekar3[at]]illinois.edu

  • Ph.D. in Biotechnology, Shivaji University, India, 2012 - 16

William Woodruff

Graduate student, 2018-
email: ww12[at]illinois.edu

  • B.S., Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering, Cornell University, 2018
  • B.A., Molecular and Cell Biology, Cornell University, 2018

Danielle Meyer

Graduate student, 2018-
email: meyer60[at]illinois.edu

  • B.S., Chemical Engineering, University of Cincinnati, 2018

Ebin Joseph

Graduate student, 2019-
email: ejosep8[at]illinois.edu

  • B.S., Chemical Engineering, University of Illinois at Chicago, 2019

Joshua Ye

Graduate student, 2021-
email: joshuay5[at]illinois.edu

  • B.S., Chemical Engineering, University of Texas at Austin, 2019

Cindy Yang

Graduate student, 2022-
email: cindy4[at]ilinois.edu

  • B.S. Biomedical Science, University of Southern Florida, 2022
  • B.A. Anthropology, University of Southern Florida, 2022

Tony Quang Pham

Graduate student, 2022-
email: thanhp2[at]illinois.edu

  • B.S. Chemical Engineering, Texas Tech University, 2022

Keertna Bhuvan

Graduate student, 2022-
email: kbhuvan2[at]illinois.edu

  • B.S. Chemical Engineering, University of California Irvine, 2022

Fakhraddin Eminli

Graduate student, 2023-
email: feminli2[at]illinois.edu

  • B.S. Chemical Engineering, Baku Higher Oil School, 2023

Afia Subhani

Graduate student, 2023-
email: afias2[at]illinois.edu

  • B.S. Chemical Engineering, Bangladesh University of Engineering and Technology, 2022

Lydia Taylor

Undergraduate research student, 2022-
email: lct2[at]illinois.edu

  • Major in Materials Science & Engineering , UIUC, Expected 2024

Alumni

Tasha Desai

Ph. D., 2004 - 09
Role: Adjunct Professor at Rio Salado College
email:

Lon Chubiz

Ph. D., 2004 - 10
Role: Assistant Professor at University of Missouri - St. Louis
email:

Kang Wu

Ph. D., 2004 - 10
Role: Assistant Professor at University of New Hampshire
email:

Supreet Saini

Ph. D., 2005 - 10
Role: Associate Professor, IIT Bombay
email:

Goutam Nistala

Ph. D., 2006 - 10
Role: Supply Chain Management at Amazon
email:

Khushnuma Koita

Ph. D., 2007 - 12
Role: Development Specialist at Praxair
email:

Yuki Kimura

Ph. D., 2007 - 12
Role: Lead Designer and Visualization Architecture Lead at OSIsoft
email:

Ahmet Badur

Ph. D., 2009 - 15
Role: Sr Engineer at Illumina
email:

Kori Dunn

Ph. D., 2009 - 15
Role: Development Specialist at Praxair
email:

Santosh Koirala

Ph. D., 2009 - 15
Role: Team Leader, Customer Support Engineer at OSIsoft
email:

Shuyan Zhang

Ph. D., 2009 - 16
Role: Sr Engineer - Process Development at Illumina
email:

Charles Rutter

Postdoc, 2014 - 16
Role: Manager, Fermentation at Golden LEAF Biomanufacturing Training and Education Center
email:

Jiewen Zhou

Ph. D., 2011 - 17
Role:
email:

Geethika Yalamanchili

Ph. D., 2012 - 17
Role: Computational Biologist at Twist Bioscience
email:

Ehab Ammar

Postdoc, 2015 - 18
Role: Postdoctoral Research Associate, Patel College of Global Sustainability, University of South Flordia
email:

Jing-jing Liu

Postdoc, 2017 - 18
Role: Senior Strain Engineering Scientist at Sugarlogix
email:

James Orr

Ph. D., 2012 - 19
Role: Patent Engineer at Cardinal Intellectual Property
email: jsorr3[at]illinois.edu

Cara Sarver

started 2021
Role: Scientific Informatics Analyst at Accenture
email:

Xiaoyi Wang

started 2021
Role: Core Facility Center, The First Affiliated Hospital of Nanjing Medical University, Nanjing, China
email:

Payman Tohidifar

started 2022
Role: Synthetic Biology Scientist at BP Biosciences Center
email:

Girija Bodhankar

started 2022
Role: Research Scientist at Abcellera
email:

Anshu Deewan

started 2022
Role: Bioinformatics Scientist at NIAID Collaborative
email:

Sichong Pei

started 2022
Role: Fermentation Engineer at Genomatica
email: