Jacob Hoyle - Lead Research Scientist at Living Carbon
Jacob Hoyle is a plant molecular biologist and geneticist working to benefit growers and improve the climate. To be adopted, climate benefiting nature-based technologies need to be profitable, so whether that means row crops or forests, they need to grow well. Jacob has taken this philosophy to the biotech startup sector, first with soy-cheese startup Nobell Foods, and in climate and forestry with Living Carbon. Jacob leads construct design and gene editing teams for Living Carbon PBC, a climate biotech company with a mission to rebalance the carbon cycle with the power of plants. Living Carbon has planted thousands of trees enhanced with a respiration shunt pathway to increase the carbon drawdown potential of photosynthesis, generating high-quality carbon removal projects. Continuing research interests include increased permanence, disease resistance, and drought tolerance.
Dr. Joan Lunney is a Distinguished Senior Research Scientist working in the Animal Parasitic Diseases Laboratory, Beltsville Agricultural Research Center, Agricultural Research Service (ARS), US Department of Agriculture, Beltsville MD USA. Dr. Lunney designed the US PRRS (porcine reproductive and respiratory syndrome) Host Genomics Consortium which assesses the role of genetics in determining pig resistance and susceptibility to PRRS virus infection, pathology, and associated growth effects. In collaboration with Canadian scientists, she has probed mechanisms controlling fetal resistance to congenital PRRS virus infection. She is an active member of the US NC229 multi-station research consortium which addresses stakeholder-driven needs to combat swine infectious diseases and identify scientific solutions to improve animal health.
Dr. Lunney coleads the US Swine Immune Toolkit efforts aimed at developing new monoclonal antibodies and immune assays for assessment of pig health and vaccine responses and for use in biomedical models of human health and disease. She is actively involved in mentoring younger scientists, particularly women scientists. She was selected as a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (1998), the International Society for Animal Genetics (2017), and the Conference of Research Workers in Animal Disease (2022). She received the ARS national Outreach Diversity, and Equal Opportunity Award (2014), and was inducted into the ARS Hall of Fame (2019). In 2022 she was announced as a U.S. Presidential Rank Awardee as a Meritorious Senior Professional and in 2023 was honored as the Distinguished Veterinary Immunologist at 13th International Veterinary Immunology Symposium (IVIS2023) in Kruger National Park, South Africa Nov. www.ivis2023.org. Dr. Lunney has served on numerous grant panels, journal editorial boards and in leadership positions for animal genetic and veterinary immunology societies.
Dr. Akhila Rajan - Associate Professor
Dr. Akhila Rajan studies how bodies sense how much energy they have available, and how this information then influences factors such as activity and hunger. Our bodies store energy as fat, to be used later when external sources of energy run low. How much energy is stored is an important piece of information that influences behavior. For example, as our bodies sense that our energy stores are dropping, hunger, and the drive to find more food, will increase. But a dysfunctional energy-sensing system may underlie obesity, in which our bodies may not properly sense that we have enough energy stored already. Dr. Rajan uses fruit flies to understand how fat signals the brain, and how chronic nutrient surplus disrupts this communication. She hopes to reveal fundamental insights into this nutrient-sensing network that could point the way toward strategies to tackle obesity.
Dr. Ming Tang - Director of Computational Biology
With over a decade of experience in computational biology, Dr. Ming Tommy Tang specializes in genomics, epigenomics, and (single-cell) transcriptomics data analysis. He has taken on pivotal roles in various cancer research projects, notably contributing to the NCI's Cancer Moonshot initiative at the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute.
As the Director of Computational Biology at Immunitas Therapeutics, he and his team employ machine-learning techniques to investigate immune cells in human tumors by analyzing single-cell RNAseq, single-cell TCRseq, and spatial transcriptome data. Their goal is to develop novel therapeutics for cancer patients.
He was a self-trained computational biologist. Beyond his professional work, Tommy is passionate about promoting open science and improving bioinformatics education to equip biologists with computational skills. More about him can be found at his website https://divingintogeneticsandgenomics.com/.