Event Date
Karen McDonald, Ph.D., Distinguished Professor Emerita, Chemical Engineering, University of California, Davis, presents "Plants as Molecular Foundries".
Dr. McDonald is a Distinguished Professor Emerita of Chemical Engineering at the University of California at Davis. Professor McDonald’s research is aimed at the development of efficient, environmentally friendly, cost-effective, and globally deployable biomanufacturing approaches for the production of recombinant proteins in resource-limited environments using plant-based production systems. Her team’s research integrates synthetic biology in plants with bioprocess engineering, including the development of novel plant viral expression systems, upstream and downstream technologies to produce recombinant proteins, plant cell bioreactors, and development of computer-based process models and techno-economic analyses (TEAs) for a variety of plant-based biomanufacturing facilities. She currently leads the Food and Pharmaceutical Synthesis research track in CUBES (Center for the Utilization of Biological Engineering in Space), a NASA-funded Space Technology Research Institute, is a Key Faculty Participant for the NSF-Funded Bioindustrial Engineering for a Sustainable Tomorrow (BEST) NRT graduate training program and serves on the Integrative Center for Alternative Meat and Protein (iCAMP) Executive Committee. From 2021 to 2024, she served on the Leadership Council for BioMADE (a Manufacturing USA Institute). She is a Fellow of the American Institute of Chemical Engineers and was awarded the 2022 D.I.C. Wang award for Excellence in Biochemical Engineering.
Host: Dr. Christine Diepenbrock (chdiepenbrock@ucdavis.edu)