Title:Professor, Department of Bioengineering University of California, USA
About:Adam Arkin is the Dean A. Richard Newton Memorial Professor in the Department of Bioengineering
at the University of California, Berkeley and Senior Faculty Scientist at the Lawrence Berkeley National
Laboratory. He and his laboratory specialize in the systems and synthetic biological approaches for
discovery, prediction, control and design of microbial and viral functions and behaviors in
environmental contexts
He is the chief scientist of the Department of Energy Scientific Focus Area, ENIGMA (Ecosystems and
Networks Integrated with Genes and Molecular Assemblies, http://enigma.lbl.gov), designed to
understand, at a molecular level, the impact of microbial communities on their ecosystems with
specific focus on terrestrial communities in contaminated watersheds.
He also directs the Department of Energy Systems Biology Knowledgebase (KBase) program:
(http://kbase.us) an open platform for comparative functional genomics, systems and synthetic
biology for microbes, plants and their communities, and for sharing results and methods with other
scientists.
He is the lead principal investigator for the three-year project Pro/Prebiotic Regulation for Optimized
Treatment and Eradication of Clinical Threats (PROTECT). Berkeley researchers, in collaboration with a
team from UC San Diego led by professor Karsten Zengler, will use microbiome engineering to create
probiotic bacterial communities that prevent and treat lung pathogens — Pseudomonas aeruginosa
and Staphylococcus aureus — in immunocompromised people, such as those with cystic fibrosis or on
respirators.