Seminar: "Engineering robust microbiome function" - Kiseok Lee, Ph.D.

Department of Biochemistry and Microbiology

 Fermentation Club Seminar Series | Fall 2026

Speaker: Kiseok Lee, Ph.D., University of Delaware

Host: Zach Lonergan

"Engineering robust microbiome function"

Abstract:

Microbial communities drive essential functions in agriculture, climate systems, and human health, yet microbiome technologies often fail outside laboratory settings due to environmental variability and ecological competition. This talk presents an ecological engineering framework integrating perturbation experiments, quantitative modeling, metagenomics, and synthetic biology to design robust microbiome functions. Large-scale soil experiments and consumer–resource modeling reveal predictive ecological parameters governing nitrogen cycling under environmental perturbation (Nature, 2025). A neural network further identifies interacting functional groups from sequencing and functional data (Under review Cell Systems, 2026). Finally, synthetic biology is used to engineer bacteria to reshape the vaginal microbiome, translating ecological principles into therapeutic strategies.