June 20th, 2024
Carly Catella successfully defends her PhD thesis. Congratulations Dr. Catella!
June 7th, 2024
Zidan Li successfully defends her PhD thesis. Congratulations Dr. Li!
March 14th, 2024
John Van Schaik successfully defends his PhD thesis. Congratulations Dr. Van Schaik!
Jan 8th, 2024
Will Parker was a Linde TA Award Winner Finalist for Fall 2023. Congrats Will!
January 5th, 2024
Will Parker was awarded the GAANN Fellowship, Congratulations Will!
Dec 29th, 2023
Tianyu's research was named one of the top 5 stories of the year for 2023 by the NSF! Congratulations, Tianyu!
Nov 6th, 2023
John Van Schaik won 1st place at the Graduate School's 9th Annual Three Minute Thesis competition!
Oct 30th, 2023
Will Parker and Carly Catella presented at the 2023 AIM-Bio Biopharmaceutical Manufacturing Symposium at DTU.
Oct 3rd, 2023
WRAL interviewed Tianyu Li to learn more about her approach to breaking down plastics in salt water!
Jun 7th, 2023
Carly Catella received an award at Affinity 2023 (Young Investigator Award), Congratulations Carly!
Dec 7th, 2022
Welcome to Will, Aryan and John Cheadle (First Year Grad Students)
Oct 14th, 2022
Dr. Deniz Durmusoglu successfully defends her PhD thesis. Congratulations Dr. Durmusoglu!
Sep 17th, 2022
Welcome to Thuan!
Aug 29th, 2022
Dr. Ibrahim Al'Abri successfully defends his PhD thesis. Congratulations Dr. Al'Abri!
Jul 11th, 2022
Dr. Scott Collins successfully defends his PhD thesis. Congratulations Dr. Collins!
Jul 6th, 2022
Welcome to Tyasia, our new lab manager!
May 3rd, 2022
Tianyu, with the Emerging Frontiers in Research and Innovation (EFRI) team, discussed the importance of cleaning and developing new ways to clean microplastic pollution to middle and high school students. The workshop aimed to raise the attention of students to the emerging problems caused by microplastic pollution and the importance of plastic recycling.
May 3rd, 2022
Dr. Crook discussed some of the research that is happening in our lab in Finding Genius Podcast. You can listen to his conversation with Richard Jacobs at "The Problem With Microplastics from the Ocean and the Structures of Nanoparticles"
May 3rd, 2022
Tianyu successfully passed her Ph.D. prelim exams. Congratulations!
Apr 26th, 2022
Congratulation Daniel Haller for receiving NSF Graduate Research Fellowship and College of Engineering Outstanding Senior Award for Scholarly Achievement.
Apr 21st, 2022
Ibrahim and Dr. Crook are winners of First-Flight Fast Program winners.
Mar 1st, 2022
Deniz is back in lab after 7 month research exchange at DTU in Denmark.
Feb 12th, 2022
Congratulations to Ibrahim, Daniel and Zidan! Their paper "Inducible directed evolution of complex phenotypes in bacteria ." is out in Nucleic Acids Research
Highlights:
Dec 13th, 2021
Dr. Justin Vento successfully defends his PhD thesis. Congratulations Dr. Vento and best of luck in Boston!
Nov 17th, 2021
We hosted high school students to participate in lab activities. Students learned about synthetic biology and had fun making art plates. See pictures in Gallery
Aug 19th, 2021
Proto Magazine interviewed Dr. Crook to discuss engineering the gut microbiome."Should We Monkey with the Microbiome?"
Jul 26th, 2021
Jun 28th, 2021
Jun14 & 16th, 2021
Zidan and Carly successfully passed their Ph.D. prelim exams. Congratulations!
Apr 12th, 2021
Our lab first paper "in Situ Biomanufacturing of Small Molecules in the Mammalian Gut by Probiotic Saccharomyces boulardii." is out in ACS Synthetic Biology
Highlights:
Dec 15th, 2020
John successfully passed his Ph.D. prelim exam. Congratulations!
Dec 7th, 2020
Welcome to Tianyu Li (first year grad students).
Nov 6th, 2020
Daniel Haller won the outstanding presentation award in 2020 Gulf Coast Undergraduate Research Symposium at Rice University. Congratulations Daniel!
Apr 30th, 2020
Dr. Crook's Paper "Transcript Barcoding Illuminates the Expression Level of Synthetic Constructs in E. coli Nissle Residing in the Mammalian Gut" is out in ACS Synthetic Biology
Mar 27th, 2020
Congratulation to Daniel Haller on the Goldwater Scholarship! Daniel's research in lab focuses on metabolic engineering optimization and biotherapeutics delivery.
Jan 13th, 2020
Welcome to Katie Day and Allison Williams and Anuj.
Dec 6th, 2019
Welcome to Ethan Purnell, Zidan Li and Carly Catella (first year grad students)
Nov 19 & 26th, 2019
Ibrahim and Deniz successfully passed their Ph.D. prelim exams. Congratulations!
Nov 18th, 2019
Welcome to CBE Student Aarati Bothe.
Aug 23th, 2019
Welcome to CBE Student Laura Merkel.
Jul 10th, 2019
Welcome to GEAR Program Student Shuang Wu.
Jun 26th, 2019
We hosted TRIO Upward Bound students to participate in lab activities. Students learned about synthetic biology and had fun making art plates and minipreping plasmids. See pictures in Gallery
Jun 6th, 2019
Justin's Review "Barriers to genome editing with CRISPR in bacteria" is out in J Ind Microbiol Biotechnol. Congratulations Justin
Mar 26th, 2019
Dr. Crook's Paper "Adaptive Strategies of the Candidate Probiotic E. coli Nissle in the Mammalian Gut" is out in Cell Host & Microbe
Highlights:
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Probiotics evolve inside mice, a path that could affect humans, too. STAT
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Probiotic bacteria evolve inside mice's GI tracts. Phys.org
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Probiotic bacteria evolve in the gut microbiome. ASM Microbial Minutes
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Can the Microbiome Deliver? A Proof-of-Concept Engineered E. coli PKU Therapeutic CellPress
Feb 25th, 2019
Deniz won College of Engineering Travel Fund to attend Keystone Symposia. Microbiome: Chemical Mechanisms and Biological Consequences (C3). Congratulations Deniz!
Dec 12th, 2018
Justin won 2nd place Poster Award in the 2nd International Conference on CRISPR Technologies. Congratulations Justin!
Dec 6th, 2018
Welcome to John Van Schaik (first year grad students)
Oct 8th, 2018
Welcome to Daniel Haller (CBE undergraduates)
Aug 21th, 2018
Welcome to Daniel Bun and Caroline Moody (CBE undergraduates)
May 15th, 2018
Ibrahim has been awarded The National Postgraduate Fellowship from Oman.
Mar 24th, 2018
Dr. Crook and his talented microbiome engineers/scientists had fun at the NC State ChE recruiting weekend.
Mar 8th, 2018
Dr. Crook's review in CellPress on Multiscale Evolutionary Dynamics of Host-Associated Microbiomes is out
Jan 15th, 2018
Nick Dasburg (undergraduate studying Biological Sciences) joined the team.
Jan 8th, 2018
Deniz Durmusoglu, Ibrahim Al’Abri (first year grad students) and Scott Collins and Justin Vento (second year grad students both co-advised by Dr. Chase Beisel) joined the Crook lab.
Dec 6th, 2017
Dr. Crook was selected as a finalist for the prestigious Dream Chemistry Award! Dr. Crook’s project "Expanding Human Metabolism by Engineering Our Commensal Microbes" was selected from among 35 other outstanding applications. The competition was held in Prague, Czech Republic by the Institute of Physical Chemistry of the Polish Academy of Sciences in Warsaw (IChF-PAN) and the Institute of Organic Chemistry and Biochemistry of the Czech Academy of Sciences (IOCB Prague). It was amazing to meet and compete with some extremely talented and forward-thinking chemists from around the globe, and to hear more about the stimulating and productive research environment at IOCB Prague. If you are ever in the area, you should check it out! Some pictures of the event are below: