Spring 2025 WCMR Open House
Fall 2025 WCMR Open House
Join us at 11:30 in EV1 221 for a workshop with UW Maths and Computer Science Librarian, Rebecca Hutchison.
This workshop introduces researchers to a selection of AI-enabled tools that can be used to help find existing literature on a wide range of topics. In addition to practical demonstrations and tips for using them effectively, we’ll also critically examine their limitations, including potential biases, and privacy and copyright concerns.
Lunch will be served, please register to attend.
Join us for a WCMR special seminar given by guest speaker Evelien Adriaenssens on
Thursday, December 4 at
11:00 am
DC 1304
Please register so we can contact you as details are solidified.
Dr. Adriaenssens will talk about her work on investigating the virome in early life and on bacteriophages associated with important commensal organisms.
WCMR will host SynBio8.0 June 15-17, 2026 in the Pearl Sullivan Engineering Building (E7)
To register, learn more about accommodations and find out how to submit your research paper, please visit SynBio8.0.
Please let us know if you are interested in volunteering at the event.
The 2026 WCMR Research Symposium event will take place on July 7.
Tuesday July 7, 2026
1:30 pm
DC 1302
The ominous rise in the frequency of antibiotic resistant microbial infections poses a global threat to human health. This threat comes in the direct form of disease related to infection of humans but also indirectly in the form of challenges to food security through loss of agricultural crops and animals to disease. The development of antibiotic drugs in previous decades was transformational, providing cheap, effective treatment for what would otherwise would be a lethal infection. As microbial strains resistant to our front-line antibiotic drugs have emerged, there is an urgent need to develop new therapeutic strategies and tools. Synthetic biology and metabolic engineering can be applied to generate "weaponized" live cell therapeutics providing new means to combat the rapidly evolving threat of microbial pathogens. In this presentation, I will highlight progress from my laboratory in engineering probiotic microbial cells that have been endowed with functionalities derived from bacteriophages and synthetic nanobodies allowing them to inhibit microbial toxins, kill microbial pathogens and deliver therapeutic molecules. The potential benefits of engineered probiotics are highlighted along with the challenges that must still be met before these intriguing new therapeutic tools can be widely deployed.