News
For News Prior to 2015 click here
1/5/23 Welcome to new student Vikram Mubayi
Welcome to our newest member, Vikram, who will be working on microbial degradation of plastics!
12/12/22 Patrick Leggieri wins Schlinger Fellowship
Congratulations to Patrick for receiving the Schlinger Fellowship for Excellence in Chemical Engineering Research! The UCSB ChE department awards this fellowship to doctoral students who have "made outstanding progress in research projects as evidenced by publications, submitted manuscripts, and other measures of impact." Way to go, Pat!
11/4/22 Congratulations to Dr. Tom Lankiewicz!
Tom presented a great EEMB exit seminar today. Congratulations, Dr. Lankiewicz! Your expertise in lab will be missed.
10/14/22 Congratulations to Dr. Jen Brown!
Today Jen successfully defended her thesis. After the defense, we got together at Michelle's and celebrated Jen's hard work. Jen is moving on to the Bay Area, where she will be working at the Joint Genome Institute. Best of luck, Dr. Brown!
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10/1/2022 Welcome to Dr. Bo Zhang
This month, Dr. Bo Zhang joins the O'Malley lab as a post-doc after completing his PhD at UC Davis. He will work on ongoing efforts to understand metabolism in anaerobic microbes. Welcome to Bo!
9/15/22 Patrick Leggieri wins best speaker at the 2022 Chlorox-Amgen Graduate Student Symposium
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Our current 5th year graduate students Patrick Leggieri, Kellie Heom, and Stephen Lillington gave inspirational talks at the 15th annual Clorox-Amgen Graduate Student Symposium (GSS). Multiple members of the lab also presented at the GSS poster session. A special congratulation goes to Patrick, whose talk on "Model-driven design of anaerobic consortia for linocellulose valorization" earned him an award for Best Oral Presentation!
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9/13/22 Welcome to new student Sarah Seagrave
Welcome to Sarah, the newest member of the O'Malley Lab! She will be working on developing novel genetic engineering tools for non-model microbes.
8/31/22 The O'Malley Lab represents at the 2022 JGI User Meeting
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We had a strong showing this summer at the 2022 Joint Genome Institute (JGI) User Meeting, located at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. Nearly half of our lab members were in attendance, representing a variety of exciting collaborations with JGI.
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7/19/22 Colleen Ahern advances to candidacy
Congratulations to Colleen for passing her candidacy exam this summer!
5/4/22 Tom Lankiewicz wins Best Student Oral Presentation at the SBFC conference
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Tom won Best Student Oral Presentation at the Symposium on Biomaterials, Fuels and Chemicals (SBFC) conference in New Orleans. Amazing work, Tom!
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4/4/22 Elizabeth Schauer wins NSF Graduate Research Fellowship
Congratulations to Liz for receiving this highly competitive fellowship!
3/23/22 The O'Malley Lab attends its first in-person conference since COVID-19!
The O'Malley Lab had a strong showing at the Spring 2022 ACS meeting in San Diego! Many lab members gave great talks or showed awesome posters. We were also able to have dinner with our colleague Dr. Kendrick Nguyen and he told us about his exciting job at Quantum-Si!
12/2/21 Congratulations to Dr. Kendrick Nguyen!
Our colleague Kendrick Nguyen defended his dissertation yesterday! Congratulations Dr. Kendrick!
12/1/21 Welcome to new students Ramya Ragunathan and Shirley Jin!
Welcome to the newest O'Malley Lab members! Ramya Ragunathan and Shirley Jin join us as new graduate students! Ramya will be working with diatoms while Shirley is next up in the hunt for lignin-active enzymes.
11/1/21 Welcome to Dr. Hugh Purdy!
Dr. Hugh Purdy joins the O'Malley lab as a post-doc after completing his PhD at UW Madison. He will work on ongoing efforts for diatoms cultivation and bio-based materials synthesis. Welcome Hugh!
7/8/21 Prof. O'Malley wins the Allan P. Colburn Award
Congratulations to Prof. O'Malley for receiving the AIChE 2021 Allan P. Colburn Award!
Summer '21, Elaina Blair and Lazarina Butkovich advance to candidacy
Congrats Elaina and Laza for reaching this PhD milestone!
11/1/20 Welcome Dr. Amy Eisenberg!
New post doc Amy Eisenberg joins us after recently finishing her dissertation at UC Berkeley. She will be working on engineering rapid evolution in non-model microbes. Welcome Amy!
10/7/20 Congratulations Dr. Swift!
Candice Swift successfully defended her dissertation today! Congratulations Dr. Swift! Candice is moving on to a position at Nephron Pharmaceuticals. You will be immensely missed in the O'Malley lab!
10/1/20 Professor Nick Peng is starting his very own lab at the University of South Carolina!
O'Malley Lab post doc Dr. Nick Peng recently accepted a job offer at University of South Carolina! Way to go Nick! Check out his lab website here. We know that the Peng lab will be highly successful!
9/1/20 New Postdoc Tejas Navaratna joins the O'Malley lab!
Tejas joins us after recently finishing his dissertation at The University of Michigan. He will be working on engineering the genomes of anaerobic fungi. Welcome Tejas!
Summer '20, Many students advance to candidacy in the O'Malley lab. Congrats everyone!
Despite COVID-19 this summer has been very productive for the graduate students of the O'Malley lab. Katharine, Kellie, Patrick, and Stephen all advanced to candidacy! Congrats all!
7/30/20 Prof. O'Malley wins the AIChE Division 15 Early Career Award
Prof. O'Malley won the inaugural Food, Pharmaceutical, and Bioengineering Early Career Award in Chemical Engineering from AIChE. Congrats, Michelle!
6/19/20 Jen Brown wins first prize for her BioE Seminar talk! Huge congrats Jen!
Graduate Student Jen Brown recently won first place in the UCSB BioEngineering Student Seminar Series! Jen always does a great job presenting her work clearly so this is truly a well earned honor. Huge congrats Jen!
5/21/20 Chris Lawson wins AEESP dissertation award!
O'Malley Lab/JBEI postdoc Chris Lawson recently won the 2020 Award Association of Environmental Engineering & Science Professors (AEESP) Doctoral Dissertation Award! Congrats Chris! It is great to have you in the group!
5/5/20 Huge congrats to Candice and Patrick!
Both Candice Swift And Patrick Leggieri recently won major fellowships! Patrick won the Graduate Research Mentorship Program Fellowship, while Candice won the Graduate Division Dissertation Fellowship! If you have met either of these fine folks you know that they couldn't be more deserving of their respective awards! Congrats!
4/13/20 Welcome to the newest members of the O'Malley-Helgeson family ! :)
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Two brand new members have joined our extended lab group! These two bundles of joy were born on April 13th and are doing great! Their names are Mia and Lucas, and they are already in agreement that fungi could be quite important to the future of biotechnology. Smart AND stylish kids! Many congratulations Michelle and Matt!
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4/3/20 Tom wins a poster prize at the EBRC virtual meeting!
O'Malley Lab graduate student Tom Lankiewicz won one of the poster prizes at the EBRC virtual poster session yesterday. Congrats Tom! He will also be giving a virtual seminar on his work identifying lignin-active enzymes on June second and this seminar will be available to the public. Stay tuned!
3/24/20 Prof. O'Malley elected AIMBE Fellow
Prof. O'Malley has been elected a fellow of the American Institute for Medical and Biological Engineering (AIMBE), one of the highest professional distinctions in the medical and bioligical engineering fields. Congratulations to Michelle for this recognition!
3/10/20 Congratulations to Dr. Wilken!
Today St. Elmo Wilken defended his dissertation successfully! Congrats to the newly minted Dr. Wilken! St. Elmo will be greatly missed for his expertise as well as his awesome attitude that always kept us entertained!
2/26/20 Patrick and Stephen represent the O'Malley Lab at the 2020 Genomic Sciences Program (GSP) Annual Principal Investigator (PI) Meeting
Patrick and Stephen headed to Washington D.C this week to represent the O'Malley lab at the annual GSP PI meeting! They each presented great posters and enjoyed interacting with our colleagues that are also funded by the DOE.
2/11/20 Tom is a PhD Candidate now! Congrats!
Tom Lankiewicz advanced to candidacy today! Congrats Tom! Now go find some lignin-active enzymes!
1/20/2020 First papers of 2020 published!
Big congrats to lab alumni Justin Yoo and Sean Gilmore, as well as their co-authors! Sean and Justin both recently published awesome papers in Nature Communications and Synthetic and Systems Biotechnology!
1/16/20 Professor O'Malley give the Lars G. Ljungdahl award lecture at University of Georgia!
Professor Michelle O'Malley gave the Lars G. Lungjdahl award lecture at the University of Georgia today! As many readers will know Professor Ljungdahl made massive contributions to the fields of biochemistry and anaerobic microbiology. Most famously the Wood-Ljungdahl pathway is partly named for Professor Ljungdahl, one of its discoverers. As one of the leading researchers into the utility of anaerobic microbes today, professor O'Malley is greatly deserving of this honor!
1/17/2020 The O'Malley lab showcases it's depth of personnel through our 2019 publication record
We published 7 papers in 2018 with 7 different first authors, and 13 people from the group contributed as middle authors to various manuscripts! Congratulations to both our first authors and middle authors who are all essential contributors to this awesome work. Check out our publications page to see the full list of our 2019 publications.
1/1/2020 Welcome to our new lab members!
Welcome to the newest O'Malley Lab members! Katharine Dickson, Elaina Blair, and Lazarina Butkovich join us as new graduate students, and Dr. Chris Lawson joins us from UW-Madison as part of his postdoctoral work with JBEI.
10/18/19 Justin successfully defends his PhD!
Justin Yoo successfully defended his dissertation today! Justin will be a greatly missed by all of us here, but he is moving on to an exciting opportunity with Bluebird Bio in Seattle. Congratulations Justin!
10/10/19 Candice awarded the Connie Frank Fellowship, congratulations!
Candice Swift was awarded the Connie Frank Fellowship today, congratulations Candice!
10/4/19 Justin and St. Elmo win awards at the 2019 Chlorox-Amgen Graduate Student Symposium
This year Justin Yoo and St Elmo Wilken both won awards at the Chlorox-Amgen GSS. St. Elmo received the award for his talk titled "Developing a genome-scale model of Neocallimastigomycota fungi as a platform for metabolic engineering" and Justin Yoo won best poster for his work titled "Bridging non-overlapping reads illuminates high-order epistasis between distal protein sites using next-generation sequencing". The O'Malley Lab now has a streak of GSS awards to maintain. Congrats!
9/9/20 Professor O'Malley receives 2020 ASM Award for Early Career Applied and Biotechnological Research
Professor O'Malley won the ASM Award for Early Career Applied and Biotechnological Research! Congrats Michelle!
5/31/2019 Jen and Justin both earn funding awards, congratulations!
Jennifer Brown and Justin Yoo both received fellowships this month, way to go! Justin was awarded the Graduate Division Dissertation Fellowship and Jen was awarded the UCSB Graduate Opportunity Fellowship.
3/31/19-4/2/19 Four O'Malley Lab members give talks at ACS National Meeting in Orlando
Professor O'Malley, Jen, Susanna, and Tom all gave excellent talks at the ACS National meeting in Orlando Florida this week! Professor O'Malley led the way with her BIOT Young Investigator award lecture titled "Engineering synthetic microbial consortia inspired by the herbivore rumen." Susanna presented her talk "Functional production of solvent transporters sourced from non-conventional fungi in model yeast," Jen presented her work "Engineering Stable Anaerobic Consortia by Understanding the Genomic Basis for Syntrophic Interactions," and Tom gave his talk "Characterizing lignin-active enzymes in anaerobic fungi for biomass deconstruction."
1/1/2019 Welcome to our new labmates!
Welcome to our newest graduate students Kellie Heom, Patrick Leggieri, Stephen Lillington, and Emily Sun!
10/8/18 Candice wins best poster award at the Chlorox-Amgen Graduate Student Symposium!
Candice Swift won best the best poster award at this years Chlorox-Amgen Graduate Student Symposium for her poster titled "Discovering natural products from the herbivore gut microbiome." Congratulations Candice!
9/14/18 New batch of publications from the O'Malley lab
Congrats to all the lab members (both past and present) who have had their work published in spring/summer of this year! Check out our publications page for links to the papers, which include new tools for receptor engineering published in ACS Synthetic Biology, metabolic models to guide in consortia assembly published in Process, and new observations on fungal catabolite repression published in Fungal Genetics & Biology as well as the AIChE Journal.
9/18 Welcome to Tom, and congrats to Jen!
Congrats to Jennifer Brown, who passed her candidacy exam this month! Also big welcome to new EEMB PhD student Tom Lankiewicz, who will work on lignin-depolymerizing metchanisms in fungi and anaerobic consortia!
8/18 Several new grants awarded from the NSF, DoD, and DOE
We are excited to begin work on several new funded research projects that will initiate some new directions for the O'Malley Lab. Our proposal entitled, "Deciphering the Structure & Function of Secondary Metabolites from Anaerobic Fungi" will be a joint project between the DOE Joint Genome Insittute and the PNNL Environmnental Molecular Sciences Laboratory (EMSL). We are also looking forward to our continued collaboration with Dave Valentine's Lab on "Designing Microbial Consortia for Conversion of Wet Waste to Commodity Chemicals" selected for funding by the DoD. Finally, we're looking forward to a new collaboration with Ryoko Oono and Katja Seltmann on an NSF EAGER project entitled "Does host specificity drive species diversification of fungal endophytes?"
7/18 O'Malley Lab goes to the Zoo!
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It was a hot one, but the O'Malley Lab was out in full force to celebrate Conservation Day at the Santa Barbara Zoo! Zoo visitors got to see anaerobes isolated from animals at the zoo under the microscope, and they learned about why gut microbes are so important to herbivores.
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7/1/18 Michelle Promoted to Associate Professor with Tenure!
Today marks the first official day of Prof. O'Malley's promotion to Associate Professor in the Department of Chemical Engineering at UC-Santa Barbara! Many thanks to all the undergraduates, PhD students, and postdocs (both past and present) who made this possible. How did we celebrate? By visiting a local alpaca farm of course.
6/12/18 Congrats to Dr. Gilmore!
Sean defended his dissertation today and officially became the 4th PhD graduate from the O'Malley Lab! Sean will join Ascus Biosciences in San Diego, where he will be leveraging his knowledge of the herbivore microbiome!
3/23/18 Listen to Prof. O'Malley talk gut microbes on Science Friday!
Michelle sat down with Ira Flatow to discuss the wealth of biotech potential hidden in poop. The interview aired live nationwide on NPR, and on several podcasts. You can listen to the segment, entitled "A Dung Detective Hunts for Rare Microbes" here.
3/18 O'Malley Lab heads to New Orleans for the Spring ACS Meeting
We headed to New Orleans to present the group's latest research as part of the Spring ACS-BIOT meeting. Congrats to Candice, Igor, & Jen who shared their most exciting results!
11/2/17 Listen to our radio interview!
Michelle was interviewed by the Academic Minute about our research with alternative fuels sourced from weird microbes. Listen to the segment here.
10/17 Justin wins (another!) poster award
Congrats to Justin, who was awarded the "Best Poster" prize at this year's UCSB Chemical Engineering Graduate Symposium.
9/23/17 Check out our most recent publications!
It's been a busy spring & summer for the group! Check out our most recent publications on our website, featuring new fungal reviews in Metabolic Engineering & Frontiers in Microbiology, as well as research papers related to engineering anaerobic microbes in Biotech for Biofuels, Biotech & Bioengineering, BMC Genomics, Microbial Cell Factories, Nature Genetics, & Nature Microbiology!
9/22/17 Prof. O'Malley wins American Chemical Society Rising Star Award
Prof. O'Malley was named one of six "Rising Stars" by the Womens Chemist Committee (WCC) of the American Chemical Society. She will be featured as part of the WCC Award Symposium at the 2018 ACS Spring Meeting in New Orleans.
9/17 St. Elmo wins Dow Discovery Fellowship
Congrats to St. Elmo, who was awarded a Dow Discovery Fellowship! This fellowship provides funding for high risk/high reward research, especially projects that will initiate new research directions. St. Elmo will use this funding to develop new experimental & modeling tools to design anaerobic microbial consortia.
9/17 Three New PhD Candidates!
Congrats to Candice, St. Elmo, & Igor, who all advanced to PhD candidacy this summer!
8/17 Justin wins fellowship
Congrats to Justin, who was awarded the Philip and Aida Siff Educational Foundation Fellowship on behalf of the Graduate Division!
8/1/17 EMSL proposal awarded
Our lab's proposal, entitled "Comprehensive Characterization of the Cellulosomes from Anaerobic Gut Fungi" was just approved by the Environmental Molecular Sciences Laboratory (EMSL)! EMSL is a subsidiary of the PNNL, which in part focuses on partnering with external scientists through instrumentation proposals to leverage EMSL's unique capabilities. Thanks, EMSL!
7/27/17 Welcome to our newest group member
This morning, Elliott Helgeson officially joined the O'Malley group (to be jointly advised by Prof. Helgeson). It will be a while before he conducts any experiments in the lab...
7/24/17 Justin wins poster award
Justin won 3rd prize at this year's Biochemical & Molecular Engineering Meeting poster competition, for his work on optimizing and engineering GPCR expression and function in yeast! Congrats, Justin!
7/17/17 O'Malley Lab joins JBEI
The O'Malley Lab is pleased to join forces with the Joint BioEnergy Institute (JBEI) to develop new biological paths towards renewable energy & bio-based products. JBEI is a Dept. of Energy Bioenergy Research Center at LBNL that was just renewed for 5 years of new BRC funding.
7/14/17 O'Malley Lab joins Engineering Biology Research Consortium (EBRC)
Prof. O'Malley was selected to join the Engineering Biology Research Consortium (EBRC) as an Academic Affiliate. The EBRC was recently formed to serve as a large, inclusive synthetic biology research community to help facilitate a unified voice for the field.
7/4/17 New CNSI Challenge Grant Awarded
The O'Malley lab is excited to partner with the Dey lab on a newly awarded CNSI Challenge Grant! Together, our labs will work towards identifying & characterizing novel uncultivatable microbial species using single cell genomics.
6/17/17 Nikki & John are hooded!
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Michelle, Nikki, & John at the 2017 Doctoral Hooding Ceremony at UCSB. A sunny day as usual! |
6/13/17 Congrats to Dr. Henske!
Today John defended his thesis project with flying colors! He will be wrapping up research here at UCSB for a few more weeks before heading to his new position in Boston at Finch Therapeutics.
6/17 Congrats to our graduating seniors!!
Huge congrats to Zach, Frankie, Jessica, & Randy who are all moving on to greener pastures after obtaining their B.S. degrees. Check out the feature article on Jess that was in the UCSB Current!
5/30/17 Cellulosome paper published in Nature Microbiology!
Congrats to Charles & Sean, who led the efforts to publish our most recent manuscript in Nature Microbiology! Here, we collaborated among 23 authors and several institutions to detail the "parts" that make up fungal cellulosomes for the first time. Read the paper here! A fun "Behind the Paper" commentary called "Microbial thieves from the barnyard" by Sean also goes along nicely with the manuscript.
Read the UCSB press release here & the DOE JGI press release here.
Read the UCSB press release here & the DOE JGI press release here.
5/24/17 Prof. O'Malley quoted in Science
Michelle was recently interviewed for two Science Careers stories. Check them out here:
"Yes, you can have a life outside the lab" & "Getting the most out of your postdoc"
5/18/17 Congrats to Dr. Schonenbach!
Nikki defended her PhD thesis today to a packed audience! Congrats to Dr. Schonenbach, who was brave enough to be the first graduate student to join the group back in 2012! Nikki is co-advised by Michelle & Songi Han.
5/2/17 Prof. O'Malley named Camille Dreyfus Teacher-Scholar
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Michelle was just named a Camille Drefyus Teacher-Scholar by the Henry & Camille Dreyfus Foundation. The award recognizes outstanding young faculty in the chemical sciences who have demonstrated excellence in research, as well as a commitment to furthering education in the chemical sciences. A list of this year's winners can be found here.
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4/6/17 O'Malley Lab heads to SF for the 2017 Spring ACS Meeting!
It was a busy week for members of the O'Malley group at the 2017 ACS Meeting in San Francisco! Michelle served as co-chair for the Division of Biochemical Technology (BIOT) meeting, presented in the ACS President's Symposium on "Science for a Sustainable Energy Future", and accepted her PMSE Young Investigator Award. Justin, Nikki, John, Sean, Susanna, & Nick all gave oral presentations in BIOT sessions, while Doriv, St. Elmo, Candice, & Igor gave poster presentations. A great time was had by all!
3/16/17 UCSB hosts Microbial Consortia & Biofilm Workshop
Dozens of microbial consortia & biofilm enthusiasts from across the country descended upon UCSB this week for a U.S.Army-sponsored workshop. Prof. O'Malley coordinated the workshop at CNSI, which was dedicated to highlighting gaps & new opportunities in the emerging field.
3/17 Prof. O'Malley gives seminars at LBNL & CMU
Michelle took a short trip to the Bay Area to present a seminar at Lawerence Berkeley National Laboratory & JBEI. Later in March, she visited her alma mater at Carnegie Mellon University to give a seminar in the Chemical Engineering Department.
1/24/17 Prof. O'Malley named Visiting Professor at Harper Adams University
Harper Adams University in the UK just added Prof. O'Malley to their roster of Visiting Professors! Harper Adams is the premier institution for agricultural related research in the UK. This appointment furthers the existing partnership between the O'Malley lab and Prof. Mike Theodorou, who have published several joint research endeavors related to anaerobic fungi. You can read more about the appointment here.
12/17 Prof. O'Malley gives seminar at Cornell
Thanks to the Dept. of Chemical & Bimolecular Engineering at Cornell, who hosted Michelle for a departmental seminar - it was great fun to see snow again!
10/17 Prof. O'Malley gives seminar at Stanford
Michelle travelled to Stanford university & had a great visit with the Dept. of Chemical Engineering.
9/17 O'Malley Lab heads to Disneyland!
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To celebrate the many accomplishments of the group, we headed to Disneyland in nearby Anaheim. Highlights of our trip included meeting Chewbacca & the Disney Princesses! Can't wait till next time (maybe then we can actually find Mickey)!
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6/16 Congrats to Doriv, who won the Elings Prize!
Doriv was named a 2016 Ellings Fellow! The fellowship is administered by CNSI, and encourages international researchers in science & engineering to become leaders in their field through training experiences with CNSI faculty at UCSB. Congrats, Doriv!
7/16 O'Malley Lab Travels to Summer Conferences!
Members of the lab have been busy criss-crossing the country this summer to present our research. John, Sean, and Michelle traveled to Chicago for the 2016 SEED Conference, and Michelle spent the following week at the 2016 SIMB Meeting in New Orleans.
6/2/16 Congrats to Justin, who is now a PhD Candidate!
Many congrats to Justin Yoo, who advanced to Candidacy today. Great work, Justin!
6/2/16 Congrats to our graduating seniors!!
Congrats to the Graduating seniors from the O'Malley Lab, who are all headed off to PhD programs! Andres will attend Stanford (Bioengineering), Charlotte will attend Northwestern (Chemical & Bimolecular Engineering), and Daniel will attend the University of Delaware (Chemical & Biomolecular Engineering). We will miss you guys!
5/29/16 John wins UCSB Dissertation Fellowship
Congrats to John Henske, who was awarded a UCSB Dissertation Fellowship! This prestigious fellowship will partially fund John's final year of his PhD research.
5/25/16 O'Malley Lab partners with international researchers to publish Fungal Diversity Notes
O'Malley Lab researchers contributed to the newest release of the Fungal Diversity Notes, which updates the community on new fungal taxa, genera, species, and sub-species isolated from various parts of the world. This 141 author paper was a lot of fun to work on! If you don't want to read all 237 pages, have a look at the section we wrote about the Neocallimastigales (anaerobic fungi) featuring Piromyces finnis, Neocallimastix californiae, and Anaeromyces robustus!
5/23/15 ChE Biochemical Engineering class visits the Santa Barbara Zoo for outreach
The senior ChE's took a field trip to the local Santa Barbara Zoo to talk with kids about microbes in our world. Groups planned interactive activities that highlighted the role of microbes in food, our bodies, and in biotechnology. We also had a chance to visit with Chad, the newest member of the giraffe family at the SB Zoo!
5/24/16 Prof. O'Malley presents at UCGHI SVCF Event to promote solutions to planetary health
A delegation of faculty from UCSB visited with representatives from the Silicon Valley Community Foundation (SVCF) on the UC-San Francisco campus today. The topic of discussion was "Technology Solutions to Achieve Planetary Health" - we look forward to working with our fellow UC campuses and the SVCF on this exciting initiative!
5/20/16 Congrats to Dr. Guerrero!
Today Jennifer Guerrero successfully defended her PhD thesis to officially become the first PhD student to graduate from the O'Malley Lab. Jen will stay true to her California roots, as she accepted a position at Amgen in Thousand Oaks. Congrats, Jen - we are so proud of you!!!
5/16 2017 Class of ACS-PMSE Young Investigators includes Prof. O'Malley
The ACS Division of Polymeric Materials: Science and Engineering (PMSE) selected Prof. O'Malley as one of the 24 PMSE Young Investigators! The 2017 PMSE Young Investigators will present their work as part of a special symposium during the Spring ACS Meeting in San Francisco. More info on the winners of the Young Investigator Award can be found here.
5/5/16 Prof. O'Malley meets President Obama and accepts PECASE award!
Prof. O'Malley traveled to Washington DC to accept the 2013 Presidential Early Career Award for Scientist and Engineers (PECASE) for her work on anaerobic fungi. Special thanks to the Department of Energy, who nominated Prof. O'Malley for the honor. Part of the festivities included a meet-and-greet with President Obama! Can you spot Prof. O'Malley among the awardees? (hint - look to the right)
4/22/16 Prof. O'Malley gives seminar in Chemical Engineering Department at MIT
Prof. O'Malley traveled back to Cambridge, MA to give a seminar in the Department of Chemical Engineering at MIT. It was great being back in the Boston area, and visiting with old (and new) friends!
4/6/16 Prof. O'Malley invited to speak at the 13th European Conference on Fungal Genetics
Prof. O'Malley made the trek to Paris, France this week to speak at the 13th European Conference on Fungal Genetics. Her talk focused on using new genomic tools to characterize and engineering anaerobic gut fungi.
4/16 Candice Awarded NSF Graduate Research Fellowship
Congrats to Candice Swift, who was awarded a prestigious National Science Foundation (NSF) Graduate Research Fellowship today!
3/22/16 Prof. O'Malley presents at JGI User Meeting
The O'Malley Lab traveled to Walnut Creek, California to present at the Joint Genome Institute (JGI) annual user meeting. Sean, John, Nick, and Charles presented posters on their JGI-supported research and Prof. O'Malley gave a talk about at the meeting about recent results from the lab's JGI-EMSL funded project.
3/13/16 Manuscript published in MEX
Congrats to Kevin & Elisa, who had their manuscript accepted in Metabolic Engineering Communications today. Although Elisa is now a PhD student at UD, we were lucky to hear the news during the ACS-BIOT reception when she was visiting with the O'Malley Lab! You can read their paper, entitled "Mitochondrial-targeting increases specific activity of a heterologous valine assimilation pathway in Saccharomyces cerevisiae" here. The work was also a collaboration with researchers from Mitsubishi Rayon, who sponsored the study.
3/12/16 UC-Santa Barbara represents at ACS-BIOT!
A delegation of students, postdocs, and former O'Malley lab members were happy to meet together at the ACS Division of Biochemical Technology (BIOT) reception onboard the U.S.S. Midway in the San Diego harbor! Here's everyone posing next to one of the vintage WWII planes on the ship.
3/9/16 O'Malley Lab presents at DOE Contractor Meeting
John and Sean presented posters on their work at the annual Dept. of Energy Genomic Sciences Contractor Meeting in Tyson's Corner, VA. The conference brought together hundreds of PIs, students, and national lab personnel for exchange and collaboration about their BER-funded work. We're looking forward to next year!
2/19/16 Prof. O'Malley featured on the BBC Newshour
2/18/16 Manuscript published in Science and Prof. O'Malley honored with PECASE Award!
Today was a big day for the O'Malley Lab! Kevin's manuscript, entitled "Early-branching anaerobic gut fungi possess a large, comprehensive array of biomass-degrading enzymes" was published in Science today (featured as a First Report). You can read it here. This work involved many authors and institutions, including those from the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory, the DOE-Joint Genome Institute, the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard, and Harper Adams University in the UK. Congrats, all!!!
On the same day, Prof. O'Malley was notified by the White House that President Obama named her as a recipient of the Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers (PECASE). The PECASE award is the highest honor bestowed by the United States Government on science and engineering professionals in the early stages of their independent research careers. In the spring, Prof. O'Malley will travel to DC to accept the award and meet POTUS himself! The White House Press Release is here.
2/10/16 Prof. O'Malley gives talks at DuPont and the ARL
Prof. O'Malley traveled to the east coast this week to meet with folks at the DuPont Experimental Station in Wilmington, Delaware. She later braved a snowy drive down I-95 to join the 2016 Institute for Collaborative Biotechnologies (ICB) Workshop on Synthetic Biology & Materials in Adelphi, Maryland. The gathering brought together MIT, Caltech, and UCSB academics to network with Army Research Lab researchers to plan future collaborations - many thanks to the ARL for your warm hospitality!
1/15/16 Susanna & Prof. O'Malley participate in the UCSB-Chalmers Materials Workshop
Michelle & Susanna participated in the 5th annual UCSB-Chalmers workshop on Materials - this time held in an unusually rainy Santa Barbara! Susanna gave a fantastic talk about the wonderful world of unusual membrane proteins and their potential for engineering & synthetic biology. We also enjoyed great discussions on the potential use of membrane proteins for biofunctionalized materials.
1/14/16 Prof. O'Malley selected as Alan P. Colburn Memorial Lecturer at the University of Delaware
Prof. O'Malley will travel back to UD in May to give the Alan P. Colburn Memorial Lecture in the Department of Chemical & Biomolecular Engineering. The lectures series is named for Alan Colburn, a chemical engineering pioneer who served as chair of the UD Chemical Engineering Department and served as acting president and provost of the university. The lectureship recognizes young faculty who best exemplify his scholarly abilities. The illustrious list of previous lecturers also includes UCSB faculty Todd Squires, Glenn Fredrickson, and Gary Leal!
1/6/16 Prof. O'Malley awarded NSF CAREER Award
Prof. O'Malley's research proposal, entitled "CAREER: Designing Synthetic Anaerobic Communities for Bioproduction" was selected for funding by the Systems and Synthetic Biology program of the NSF-Division of Molecular and Cellular Biosciences (MCB). You can access the UCSB press release here. The 5-year proposal will provide $801,701 of funding to construct new partnerships between microbes that are inspired by natural anaerobic consortia. Thanks, NSF!
1/5/16 Manuscript published in ACS-Chemical Biology
The new year is off to a great start with the publication of Jen's manuscript in ACS-Chemical Biology! You can read her paper, entitled "Intracellular FRET-based screen for redesigning the specificity of secreted proteases" here.
12/5/15 O'Malley Lab survives Zumba!
As a going away gift for Kevin (and to settle a bet), the O'Malley lab banded together to attend Zumba class in downtown Santa Barbara! We especially enjoyed seeing Kevin in his element, and he got several opportunities to teach the class from the main stage. Lots of fun was had by all!
11/20/15 Mike Theodorou visits the O'Malley Lab
The O'Malley lab was once again privileged to host Prof. Mike Theodorou from Harper Adams University for the past 6 weeks. Mike helped us isolate some more specimens from the SB Zoo and our culture collection is thriving! See you next time, Mike!
11/20/15 Manuscript published in Anaerobe
Congrats to Kevin & John, who just had their work accepted in Anaerobe! You can read their paper, entitled "Robust and effective methodologies for cryopreservation and DNA extraction from anaerobic gut fungi" here.
11/8/15 O'Malley group presents at AIChE and visits Palo Alto
The O'Malley group presented several of our research efforts at the American Institute of Chemical Engineers (AIChE) Annual Meeting in Salt Lake City, UT. The annual gathering of chemical engineers was a lot of fun (but very cold!). Prof. O'Malley stopped at the DuPont Industrial Biosciences Facility in Palo Alto on the return home to give a seminar about gut fungal enzymes.
11/2/15 Prof. O'Malley presents at EmTech
Check out the short presentation about anaerobic microbiomes given by Prof. O'Malley on the main stage at EmTech. It was an honor to be counted among the 2015 Innovators Under 35!
10/21/15 UCSB-Cottage Hospital Special Research Award given to Prof. O'Malley
Prof. O'Malley was selected as the 2015 winner of the Cottage Health - UCSB Special Research Award for her proposal "Identification of novel bioactive compounds from anaerobic gut fungi".
10/21/15 Prof. O'Malley visits JBEI
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Prof. O'Malley had a great time meeting folks and giving a seminar at the Joint BioEnergy Institute (JBEI) in Emeryville, CA.
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10/9/15 Prof. O'Malley gives seminar at Tulane University
Thanks to Anne Robinson and Julie Alpert for hosting Prof. O'Malley for a seminar in the Department of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering at Tulane!
8/26/15 Prof. O'Malley gives seminar at Georgia Tech
It was fantastic visiting the Department of Chemical & Biomolecular Engineering at Georgia Tech - special thanks to hosts Julie Champion and Mark Styczynski!
8/18/15 Prof. O'Malley named by MIT Technology Review as one of the 35 Top Innovators Under 35!
Prof. O'Malley was named one of the 35 Top Innovators Under 35 by MIT Technology Review! Other winners of this award include Mark Zuckerburg (the co-founder of Facebook) and Jonathan Ive (the chief designer of Apple). Read Prof. O'Malley's profile here, which will be published in MIT Tech Review soon.
8/15 O'Malley Lab joins Twitter!
Our lab will now be sharing news and updates on Twitter! Tweet us @omalleylab
8/15 Prof. O'Malley presents at the GRC on Cellulases, Cellulosomes, and Carbohydrate Modifying Enzymes in Andover, NH
Prof. O'Malley was an invited speaker at the 2015 Gordon Research Conference on Cellulosomes, Cellulases, & Other Carbohydrate Modifying Enzymes. Attendees came from across the world to share their exciting work on biomass deconstruction. Looking forward to the next conference in 2017!
7/15/15 Prof. O'Malley and Kevin present at the Biochemical & Molecular Engineering XIX Meeting in Puerto Vallarta, Mexico
Kevin and Prof. O'Malley had a fantastic time at the Biochemical & Molecular Engineering XIX Conference on the warm shores of Puerto Vallarta! Prof. O'Malley gave an invited talk about the group's research on synthetic anaerobic consortia.
7/1/15 O'Malley lab partners with the Santa Barbara Zoo for their Conservation Expo
The O'Malley lab visited the Santa Barbara Zoo today to share our knowledge of gut microbes with the world! Children and their families were introduced to the wonderful world of gut microbes, especially the role that they play in our health and the health of zoo animals. Lots of fun was had by all!
6/11/15 Manuscript published in Bioengineered
Congrats to Sean and John for the publication of their commentary entitled "Driving Biomass Breakdown through Engineered Cellulosomes", which was published in Bioengineered today. You can read the open-access article here.
6/10/15 O'Malley Lab presents at 2015 SEED conference in Boston
Prof. O'Malley gave an invited talk on synthetic anaerobic consortia at the 2015 Synthetic Biology: Evolution, Engineering, and Design (SEED) Meeting held in Boston, MA. John and Sean also presented posters on their work. As former Boston natives, we had great fun visiting our former stomping grounds (but we will not miss the humidity!).
6/15 Congrats to our Graduating Seniors!
Congrats to graduating chemical engineering seniors Sarah, Natalie, Wen-Kang, and Erich, who are all leaving the O'Malley lab for greener pastures! Good luck everyone, and keep in touch!
6/2/15 Sean passes his PhD candidacy exam
Today, Sean is now officially a PhD candidate in Chemical Engineering - congrats, Sean!
5/14/15 Kevin Accepts Assistant Professor Position at Purdue University
Kevin accepted a position as an Assistant Professor in the Department of Agricultural & Biological Engineering at Purdue University! Here he is proudly holding his acceptance letter. We wish him the best of luck in starting his own group!
Kevin will start his position on January 1, 2016.
3/31/15 Sean Receives the NSF Graduate Fellowship
Today, Sean was awarded an NSF Graduate Fellowship for his proposal on synthetic fungal cellulosomes. Congrats, Sean!!!
3/27/15 O'Malley Lab visits collaborators at NREL and takes in the sites in Golden, CO
Following the Spring ACS Meeting, members of the O'Malley lab traveled the short distance to Golden, CO to visit the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL). Special thanks to NREL collaborator Mike Resch, who coordinated a fantastic visit for us (including a visit to the local brewhouse shown here)!
3/22/15 O'Malley Lab heads to the Spring ACS Meeting in Denver
Sean, John, Charles, and Prof. O'Malley all presented talks and posters in the BIOT division of ACS at the Denver Spring meeting (and enjoyed some tasty brews in town!).
3/16/15 Prof. O'Malley invited to speak at the AIChE Food Supply Chain Sustainability Workshop
Prof. O'Malley traveled to Princeton University to give an invited talk at the AIChE Workshop for Sustainability in the Food Supply Chain. Her talk focused on engineering anaerobic digestion for food and farm wastes.
2/23/15 Prof. O'Malley invited to speak at the DOE-BER contractor meeting
Prof. O'Malley gave an invited talk in the Fungal Biology breakout session at the DOE-BER Contractor meeting in Arlington, VA.
2/14/15 O'Malley Lab visits the Santa Barbara Zoo for Outreach Activities with CenSURF
Charles and Prof. O'Malley joined together with Alison Butler, Petra VanKoppen, and graduate student members of UCSB's Center for Sustainable Use of Renewable Feedstocks (CenSURF) to lead science demonstrations for visiting zoo campers. Color-change reactions were used to demonstrate what happens when carbon dioxide accumulates in the oceans and atmosphere - very educational!
2/11/15 Nikki Presents at Biophysical Society Meeting
Nikki Schonenbach presented her work on membrane protein oligomers at the 59th Annual Biophysical Society Meeting in Baltimore, Maryland.
1/14/15 Jen wins poster prize at the ICBE Meeting in Austin, TX
Jen Guerrero won a poster prize for her work at the 2015 International Conference on Biomolecular Engineering (ICBE) in Austin, TX - congrats, Jen!