8/18/2011 Greta Weiderman
Written by Greta Weiderman
Ting Lu and Jennifer Bailey have joined the Department of Bioengineering at the University of Illinois.
An assistant professor, Lu's research focuses on synthetic biology: the construction, analysis and utilization of genetic regulatory circuits. He models and engineers bacterial systems for human medicine applications and is interested in probiotics for gastrointestinal health and other novel therapeutic delivery systems.
Lu received his Ph.D. in biophysics and his M.S. in physics from the University of California at San Diego, La Jolla, and his undergraduate degree in physics from Zhejiang University in Hangzhou, China.
Lu spent the past year as a postdoctoral researcher at James Collins’ lab at Wyss Institute at Harvard and Boston universities, and he was previously a postdoctoral researcher with Ron Weiss at Massachusetts Institute of Technology.Lu (above) spent the past year as a postdoctoral researcher at James Collins’ lab at Wyss Institute at Harvard and Boston universities, and he was previously a postdoctoral researcher with Ron Weiss at Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
At the University of Illinois, Lu has started setting up his laboratory and will begin teaching a graduate level course in the spring.
Bailey, a lecturer, will use her experience in 3D cell culture and physical analysis of extracellular matrix properties to teach the Cell and Tissue Engineering Lab. In that course, she will incorporate biochemical, genetic and cellular analysis techniques. Bailey’s goal is for her students to understand biochemical and tissue engineering techniques that are currently used in industry.
Bailey earned her Ph.D. in biomedical engineering from Purdue University in 2010 and her undergraduate degree there with a double major in chemical engineering and chemistry in 2004. During the past year, she taught at University of Southern Indiana in Evansville, Ind.
“In my classes, students will not only learn traditional engineering principles and practice applying them to basic problems, but they will also be challenged to adapt their knowledge for larger, more complicated questions as they will need to do after graduation,” she said.