Patten Seminar: Xuejun Zhu

Speaker: Assistant Professor Xuejun Zhu, Department of Chemical Engineering, Texas A&M University Seminar: Engineering the Invisible: Characterizing and Reprogramming Microbes for Health Host: Assistant Professor Antonio Del Rio Flores Abstract Microbial cells are living factories for manufacturing a large array of chemicals and proteins for a variety of applications in health, agriculture, and industry. This talk will cover our three recent efforts demonstrating microbial potential for a healthier future: (1) discovering gut bacterial enzymes that degrade pharmaceuticals and dietary compounds, contributing to treatment variations, (2) characterizing a protein-based nanomachine with antimicrobial activity against antibiotic-resistant bacteria, and (3) engineering microbes as biosynthetic platforms for benzoxazoles with pharmaceutical applications. Biosketch Dr. Xuejun Zhu is an Associate Professor in the Department of Chemical Engineering at Texas A&M University. She earned her B.S. from Nanjing University in 2012 and her Ph.D. with Dr. Wenjun Zhang in Chemical Engineering from the University of California, Berkeley in 2017. Following her doctoral studies, she completed a two-year postdoc at MIT with Dr. James Collins before joining the faculty at Texas A&M University. Dr. Zhu’s research focuses on bacterial enzyme discovery, characterization, and engineering. Her work also involves the design and assembly of recombinant microorganisms to produce small molecules. She has been recognized with several prestigious awards, including the NIH (NIGMS) Maximizing Investigators' Research Award for Early Stage Investigators in 2022, the Artie McFerrin Department of Chemical Engineering Outstanding Junior Faculty Award in 2022, the Engineering Genesis Award from Texas A&M Engineering Experiment Station (TEES) in 2023, and the Dean of Engineering Excellence Award (Assistant Professor level) from TEES in 2024.