User:ClarkeS

Bio

Sean Clarke

saclarke at MIT

directory info

I am a first-year Biological Engineering (BE, MIT Course XX) graduate student. I have passed my qualifying exam and joined the Alm lab. I worked in the Endy Lab in the summer of 2005. This summer I am formulating a thesis project directed at engineering stress tolerance.

I'm the first-year class representative to the BE graduate student board, so I am open to suggestions about improving the first-year experience.

• B.S.M.E., University of Texas at Austin, biomedical technical area
• B.A., University of Texas at Austin, Plan II Liberal Arts Honors Program
• Fulbright grant, Milan, Italy, independent study of industrial and engineering design methods, and classes in biomaterials at the Politecnico di Milano

My background is in mechanical engineering and design, but not of things quite as small as BioBricks.

Potential research topics

• Scaling of engineered biology
• Replicating biological machines
• Technologies/vocabularies to make biological engineering easier
• Biomimicry, bioscaffolds for material processing
• Recycling/"cradle to cradle" design of biological systems
• Usability of biological design software or methods
• Biomineralization

Classes

• BE.420
• BE.430
• 7.81 Systems Biology
• 18.085 Applied Math for Engineers

Projects

• My first project was the Orthogonal cloning of clpXP from E. coli into yeast. So far I've been more successful at learning molecular biology and techniques by making mistakes than at cloning into yeast. My work is documented in a lab notebook, but I would like to move to a wiki or other on-line lab notebook for searching, organization, and linking.

• Another useful project would be the construction of a low copy number plasmid for use with BioBricks. It might be based on the F or mini-F plasmid from E. coli.