The Environmental Molecular and Synthetic Biology Lab in the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign (UIUC) has openings for PhD students to work under the guidance of Dr. Na Wei starting in Fall 2025. Candidates with past degrees and research experiences in environmental engineering, biology, bioengineering, chemical engineering are welcome.
Our lab will provide the opportunity to work on exciting research projects
in emerging areas of synthetic biology for environmental applications. Specific research directions include: i) plastic degradation and upcycling, ii) waste-to-value biotransformation and resource recovery, iii) biosensing. Underlying the abovementioned research areas is the combined application of molecular biology techniques, synthetic biology, protein engineering, systems biology, machine learning and AI, and environmental engineering principles. The environmental molecular and synthetic biology lab, the CEE department, the Institute for Genomic Biology, and UIUC have state-of-the-art facility to support the research.
Candidates are encouraged to contact Dr. Na Wei, nawei2@illinois.edu by sending a copy of CV, transcripts, TOEFL/IELTS, and a list of references, if available. Please explain how your past research/study experiences and your future research interests are aligned with the research topics in our lab in the email.
You can find more information in the following:
https://cee.illinois.edu/
https://environ-syn-bio.weebly.com/