SBWGLunches
Announcements
April 28: (Monday) → Calestous Juma (HKS) @ MIT: "GOVERNING SYNTHETIC BIOLOGY: Technological Controversies and Public Policy" Abstract
Current SBWG Seminar Schedule
Spring 2014
The schedule is still being finalized but thus far includes:
- Please note that:
- @MIT will be Mondays at 12 pm (noon) in the 500 Tech Square (NE47) first floor conference room. This is different from last year.
- @Harvard will be Tuesdays at 12 pm (noon) and will meet on the HMS campus in NRB (New Research Building), Rm. 350. (Check in with Harvard security first).
- @BU will be Tuesdays at 12 pm (noon) and will meet in the Photonics Center, Rm. 339 (8 Saint Mary's St, Boston).
February 14: (Friday) → Eric Klavins (UW) @ MIT: "Engineering State in Synthetica"
March 11: (Tuesday) → Jeff Gore (MIT) @ HMS: "Cooperation, cheating, and collapse in biological populations"
April 7: (Monday) → Ed Boyden (MIT Media Lab) @ MIT: "Multiplexed and Modular Optogenetic Control"
Cancelled, will reschedule April 14: (Monday) → Eric Alm (MIT) @ MIT
April 28: (Monday) → Calestous Juma (HKS) @ MIT: "GOVERNING SYNTHETIC BIOLOGY: Technological Controversies and Public Policy" Abstract
May 12: (Monday) → Kwanghun Chung (MIT) @ MIT
May 20: (Tuesday) → Mike Smanski (MIT) @ HMS
Direction Between Campuses
From MIT to Harvard (HMS) / From Harvard (HMS) to MIT:
The fastest way between campuses by public transportation is to take the CT2 or 47 buses towards Ruggles or Dudley, respectively. Transit time via bus ~20-30 min. You can also take the Red/Green(D) T lines and get off at Kendall and Longwood for MIT and HMS, respectively. Transit time via the T is ~40-50min. Taxi fare is ~$15. If you're a Harvard student, the Harvard shuttles are reported to be more convenient.
- @ HMS, get off at Longwood Ave across from the Children's hospital and walk down Ave. Louis Pasteur to get to the NRB. When you arrive, you will need to check in with security to get a visitor's pass.
- @ MIT, get off at the corner of Vassar/Massachusetts Ave., walk up to the Stata Center, and go under the overhanging archway under the Stata Center to get to Bldg. 56.
From MIT to BU / From BU to MIT:
The fastest way between BU and MIT by public transportation is to take the CT2 or 47 buses towards Ruggles or Dudley respectively. Transit time via bus ~10-20min. You can also take the Red/Green(B) T lines and get off at Kendall and BU Central for MIT and BU, respectively. Transit time via the T is ~30-40min. Taxi fare is ~$10. Walking takes 30-40 min.
- @ BU, get off at the Lenox St. stop. From the stop, walk towards CITGO sign away from Commonwealth Avenue which will be behind you and to your left. You will arrive at the intersection of St. Mary's St. and Mountfort St. Turn left onto St. Mary's St. The Photonics Center is the first building on the right. Upon entering the building the venue is on the 3rd floor.
- @ MIT, get off at the corner of Vassar/Massachusetts Ave., walk up to the Stata Center, and go under the overhanging archway under the Stata Center to get to Bldg. 56.
From Harvard (HMS) to BU / From Harvard (HMS) to BU:
The fastest way between Harvard (HMS) and BU by public transportation is to take the CT2 or 47 buses towards Ruggles or Dudley, respectively. Transit time with the bus is ~10 min. You can also take the Green(B)/Green(D) T lines and get off at BU Central and Longwood for BU and HMS, respectively. Transit time via the T is ~30-40min. Taxi fare is ~$5. Walking takes 20-30 min.
- @ BU, get off at the Lenox St. stop. From the stop, walk towards CITGO sign away from Commonwealth Avenue which will be behind you and to your left. You will arrive at the intersection of St. Mary's St. and Mountfort St. Turn left onto St. Mary's St. The Photonics Center is the first building on the right. Upon entering the building the venue is on the 3rd floor.
- @ HMS, get off at Longwood Ave across from the Children's hospital and walk down Ave. Louis Pasteur to get to the NRB. When you arrive, you will need to check in with security to get a visitor's pass.
Previous Schedules
Fall 2013
September 30: (Monday) → Adam Arkin (Cal, LBNL) @ MIT
October 21: (Monday) → Neel Joshi (Harvard, Wyss) @ MIT: "Biofilm Integrated Nanofiber Display (BIND): A Genetically Programmable Materials Fabrication Platform"
October 29: (Tuesday) → Kristala Prather (MIT) @ BU: "Parts, Devices and ‘Chassis’ in Support of Metabolic Engineering"
November 4: (Monday) → Feng Zhang (MIT, Broad) @ MIT: "Genome Engineering: Technologies and Applications"
November 19: (Tuesday) → David Liu (Harvard) @ HMS (NOTE: 12:30pm instead of 12:00pm)
December 10: (Tuesday) → Karl Hauschild (MIT) @ HMS
December 16: (Monday) → David Mooney (Harvard, Wyss) @ MIT
Spring 2013
January 29: (Tues) → Brynne Stanton (Voigt Lab, MIT) @ MIT: "Developing a language to program cells"
February 5: (Tues) → David Berry (Flagship Ventures) @ Harvard: “Synthetic Biology and the Audacity to Change the World”
February 12: (Tues) → Jason Kelly (Gingko Bioworks) @ Harvard: "Ginkgo BioWorks: How to start a SynBio company for fun and profit"
March 5: (Tues) → Tim Lu (MIT Synthetic Biology Center) @ Harvard: "The Multi-Faceted Bacteriophage: Computation, Therapeutics, and Diagnostics"
April 8: (Mon) → Angela DePace (Harvard) @ MIT: "The importance of visualization for scientists and engineers."
April 23: (Tues) → Sri Kosuri (Harvard) @ BU (Photonics Lab, PHO 339): "Academia, industry, and back again."
April 29: (Mon) → Kevin Esvelt(Harvard) @ MIT: "Accelerating Engineering & Dealing with the Consequences: Cas9, Evolution, and Gene Control"
May 6: (Mon) → Tillman Gerngross (Dartmouth, GlycoFi) @ MIT: "Is Synthetic Biology Really Useful?"
May 13: (Mon) → Chris Voigt @ (MIT Synthetic Biology Center) MIT. CANCELED
Fall 2012
September 24: (Mon) → Drew Endy (Stanford University) @ MIT in 56-614: "Engineering w/ Serine Integrases, Alien Messages (?!), and Joy's Law"
October 1: (Mon) → Wilson Wong (BU) @ MIT in 56-614: "Synthetic Biology in Translational Medicine: Engineering T cells for cancer therapy"
October 16: (Tues ) → Mo Khalil (BU) @ Harvard in Countway Library (HMS Main Quad), Minot Room: "Programming cellular systems from the inside and out"
October 22: (Mon) → MIT iGEM team[1] @ MIT in 56-614: "RNA Strand Displacement for Sensing, Information Processing, and Actuation in Mammalian Cells"
October 29: (Mon) → Doug Densmore (BU) @ MIT in 56-614: “Synthetic Biology Design Automation: Challenges and Opportunities” CANCELED DUE TO HURRICANE SANDY. RESCHEDULED TO Nov. 26
November 6: (Tues) → Amy Keating (MIT) @ BU: "SYNZIPs: modular coiled-coil parts for protein engineering"
November 13: (Tues) → Rahul Sarpeshkar (MIT) @ Harvard in NRB 350: "Analog Synthetic and Systems Biology"
November 20: (Tues) → Domitilla del Vecchio (MIT) @ Harvard in NRB 350: "A Control Theory Approach to Design Biomolecular Circuits"
November 26: (Mon) → Doug Densmore (BU) @ MIT in 56-614: “Synthetic Biology Design Automation: Challenges and Opportunities”
November 27: (Tues) → Michael Laub (MIT) @ Harvard in NRB 350: "Exploiting studies of signaling protein evolution for synthetic biology"
December 3: (Mon) → Ron Weiss (MIT) @ MIT in 56-614: "Synthetic biology: from parts to modules to therapeutic systems".
December 10: (Mon) → James Collins (BU) @ MIT in 56-614. CANCELED. Will reschedule for next semester.
Spring 2012
January 30: Steve Goldfless (Niles Lab, MIT): "Building robust cross-platform gene expression control with synthetic RNA-protein interactions"
February 27: Lior Nissim (Lu lab, MIT): "A tunable dual-promoter integrator for targeting of cancer cells"
March 12: Justin Buck (Cambrian Innovation): "Bioelectrochemical systems"
April 2: Chris Pirie (Manus Biosynthesis): "Emergent integration of protein engineering, metabolic engineering, and synthetic biology"
April 23: Lawrence David (Alm lab, MIT): "A year-long study of daily changes to human microbiota"
May 7: Pete Carr (MIT Lincoln Labs): "Engineered Genetic Codes: Implications for Protein Design, Genetic Control, and Environmental Safety"
June 26: Jon Chestnut (Life Technologies): "Life Technology custom TAL effectors"
Fall 2011
September 12: Jeffrey Way (Wyss Institute): Synthetic biological approaches to bioenergy and multicomponent protein therapeutics
September 22 (Special time: Thursday at 11am): Prof. Feng Zhang (MIT Brain and Cognitive Sciences)
October 3: MIT 2011 iGEM team
October 24: Tae Seok Moon (MIT BE): Construction of Synthetic Circuits by Harnessing Orthogonal Genetic Parts
October 31: Tina Toni (MIT BE/CSAIL): Computational design for noisy synthetic biology
November 21: Peter Carr (MIT Lincoln Labs), Daniel Ducat (Harvard Medical School), Allen Lin (MIT) & Prof. Kenneth Oye (MIT): Panel discussion on synthetic biology policy workshops
November 28: Noah Davidsohn (MIT BE): Predictive Composition of Genetic Circuits From Well Characterized Parts
December 5: Sri Kosuri (Wyss Institute): Writing in DNA: Development and applications of next generation DNA synthesis technologies
December 12: Prof. Chris Voigt (MIT BE)
December 19: Yuri Matsumoto (MIT BE): An Evolutionary approach to develop genetically encodable MRI contrast agents
Spring 2011
February 14: Barry Canton (Ginkgo Bioworks): Wetware, Hardware, and Smartware at Ginkgo Bioworks
February 28: Randy Rettberg (iGEM/Registry of Standard Biological Parts): What's new at the Registry
March 14: David Hagen (MIT BE): Vast uncertainty in biological models and how to deal with it
March 28: Evan Thompson (MIT Biology): SYNZIP interaction domains: Well-characterized interaction modules for biological engineering
April 25: Himanshu Dhamankar (MIT ChE): De novo pathway engineering for value added products from biomass: Biosynthesis of 3-hydroxybutyrolactone (3-HBL) from glucose
May 9: Kevin Esvelt (Wyss Institute at Harvard): A system for the continuous directed evolution of biomolecules
Fall 2010
September 13: Initial meeting. Discuss areas of interest for future seminars.
September 27:
- Shawn Finney-Manchester (MIT ChemE): "A Method for In Vivo Targeted Mutagenesis"
- Saurabh Gupta (MIT CSAIL/BE): "Genetically Programmed Pathogen Sense & Destroy"
October 25: MIT 2010 iGEM Team: Presentation of this year's project and results
November 22: Peter Carr (MIT Media Lab)
November 29: Jake Beal (BBN Technologies): "High Level Languages for Synthetic Biology"
December 6: Asst. Prof. Tim Lu (MIT EECS)
SBWG Mailing List
To be added to the synthbio mailing list, please send an email to Deepak (contact info below).
Coordinators
If you have any questions about the Synthetic Biology Working Group series or would like to present, be contact one of the current coordinators below:
Current:
Daniel B. Goodman [dbg at mit dot edu] (PhD Candidate in Bioinformatics and Genomics, Harvard-MIT Division of Health Sciences and Technology, Church Lab)
Traci Haddock, Ph.D. [tracihaddock at gmail dot com] (Postdoc, BU Dept. of Electrical and Computer Engineering, Densmore lab)
Deepak Mishra [dmishra at mit dot edu] (PhD Candidate, MIT Dept. of Biological Engineering, Weiss lab)
Felix Moser, Ph.D. [fmoser at mit dot edu] (Postdoc, MIT Dept. of Biological Engineering, Voigt lab)
Jacob Rubens [jacob.rubens at gmail dot com] (PhD Candidate in Microbiology, MIT, Lu lab)
Alumni:
Jeff Wagner [jcwagner at mit] (PhD Candidate, MIT Dept. of Biological Engineering, Niles lab)
Steve Goldfless [sjg at mit] (PhD Candidate, MIT Dept. of Biological Engineering, Niles lab)
Brian Belmont, PhD [bbelmont at mit] (Previously MIT Dept. of Biological Engineering, Niles lab)
Please contact one of the current coordinators if you're an alum and would like your name/contact info added here.
Funding
We are grateful for funding from SynBERC and the MIT Graduate Student Council.
We are always happy to partner with foundations and companies who seek to interact with this highly active network of synthetic biologists.
Constitution
As a member organization of MIT's Association of Student Activities, SBWG is required to display our organization's constitution. Here is the SBWG Constitution.
