UMD Hosts 6th Annual MASBN Symposium

MASBN

The University of Maryland welcomed the Mid-Atlantic Synthetic Biology Network to campus for the group's 6th Annual Symposium on January 8-9, 2026.

Held in the Stamp Student Union, the two-day event gathered 195 attendees from academia, government, and the private sector across the Mid-Atlantic region with a shared interest in exploring synthetic biology technologies.

“This symposium brings together a collaborative community, from students to senior investigators, to accelerate innovative solutions using the tools of synthetic biology to real-world challenges across our region,” said William Bentley, Robert E. Fischell Distinguished Professor, inaugural director of the Robert E. Fischell Institute for Biomedical Devices at the University of Maryland, and co-chair of the symposium’s planning committee.

The event began with a welcome by symposium co-chairs Keith Kozminski, associate professor of Biology and Cell Biology and director of Undergraduate Programs at the University of Virginia, and Sam Schaffter, lead scientist for RNA Synthetic Biology in the Cellular Engineering Group at the National Institute for Standards and Technology.

Bentley then chaired the symposium’s first session, “New to the Mid-Atlantic,” which included presentations by David Glass, Arthur P. Grollman Endowed Assistant Professor of Physical and Quantitative Biology and Laufer Center Endowed Assistant Professor, Stony Brook University; David Garcia, assistant professor in the Department of Chemical, Biochemical and Environmental Engineering at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County; Tara Deans, associate professor in the Wallace H. Coulter Department of Biomedical Engineering at Georgia Tech and Emory University; and Emma Chory, assistant professor of Biomedical Engineering at Duke University.

The second session, “Cell-free expression systems,” was chaired by Mark Styczynski, MASBN Executive Committee member and professor in the School of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering at the Georgia Institute of Technology. Presenters included: Fernanda Piorino, PREP research associate in the Cellular Engineering Group at NIST; Pamela Peralta-Yahya, professor and associate chair for Research and Postdoctoral Training at Georgia Tech; Widianti Sugianto, postdoctoral fellow in the Molinari Lab at the University of Maryland; and Casey Bernhards, research biologist at the U.S. Army DEVCOM Chemical Biological Center.

The first day of programming concluded with a poster session and reception.

Day two kicked off with a joint welcome by Bentley and Edward Eisenstein ,MASBN Executive Committee member, investigator at the Institute for Bioscience and Biotechnology Research and associate professor in the Fischell Department of Bioengineering, University of Maryland. The pair then introduced UMD alumnus Matthew DeLisa, Ph.D ’00, director of postdoctoral studies and William L. Lewis Professor at Cornell University, who offered a keynote address titled “Adventures in synthetic glycobiology: designing glycosylation for better biologics.”

Sara Molinari, symposium co-chair and assistant professor in the Fischell Department of Bioengineering, UMD, led the session that followed, “Engineering living materials.” This session included presentations by: Fuzhong Zhang, Francis F. Ahman Professor in the McKelvy School of Engineering at Washington University in St. Louis; Anna Duraj-Thatte, assistant professor in the Department of Biological Systems Engineering at Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University (Virginia Tech); Lingchong You, James L. Meriam Distinguished Professor of Biomedical Engineering, Duke; and Anne Meyer, associate professor in the Department of Biology at the University of Rochester.

Presentations were followed by a poster session, which occurred during lunch.

Session four focused on “Synthetic biology for agriculture and the environment.” It was chaired by Scott Lenaghan, co-director of the Center for Agricultural Synthetic Biology and associate professor in the Department of Food Science at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville. Speakers during this session included Michael Timko, MASBN Executive Committee chair member and Lewis & Clark Professor of Biology, professor of Public Health Science, and director of Human Biology Distinguished Major Program at the University of Virginia; Alex Pfotenhauer, research assistant professor in the Center for Agricultural Synthetic Biology at the University of Tennessee; Anne Simon, Department of Cell Biology and Molecular Genetics professor at UMD; Anna Yaschenko, doctoral candidate at North Carolina State University; and Hannah Parks, senior scientist in the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory.

The symposium’s final session, chaired by Schaffter, explored “Measurements and standards for synthetic biology” through a presentation by Elizabeth Strychalski, Cellular Engineering Group leader at NIST, and a panel discussion involving Ian Hines, biologist in the Complex Microbial Systems Group at NIST, Ryan Bing, senior metabolic engineer at Capra Biosciences, and Jonathan Jacobs, senior director of bioinformatics and BioNexus principal scientist, ATCC.

The event concluded with an announcement that the next MASBN Symposium will take place in Pennsylvania, with the hosting institute to be announced at a later date.

The National Science Foundation sponsors MASBN’s annual symposium in an effort to showcase research and opportunities in all areas of synthetic biology across the Mid-Atlantic region.

MASBN covers a variety of areas, including, but not limited to: agricultural and water sustainability, diagnostics, therapeutics, biosecurity and defense, energy, nutrition and food security, information processing, and manufacturing. Membership is available to those that reside in Delaware, Maryland, the District of Columbia, Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina, and Georgia.

Additional photos from the event can be viewed here.

Published January 15, 2026