I lead a highly collaborative, collegial, and diverse research group that forges new understanding and engineering strategies to interface microorganisms and materials. I am enthralled by the incredible, diverse functionality of biological molecules and assemblies and seek to engineer these complexes and their host organisms to address global challenges in energy and the environment.

I joined Rice University in 2019 as a Professor of BioSciences and CPRIT Scholar in Cancer Research, with joint appointments in the departments of Chemical & Biomolecular Engineering and Bioengineering. Prior to that, I was a Staff Scientist at LBNL’s Molecular Foundry for 12 years. I earned my Ph.D. in Chemistry from Stanford University with Prof. Steve Boxer and was a post-doctoral fellow working on synthetic biology with Prof. Pam Silver at Harvard Medical School.

Favorite postulate: Ockham’s Razor. It’s simple and to the point

  cajo-franklin at rice dot edu.

Education: Ph.D. Chemistry, Stanford, 2004
Postdoctoral Fellow in Systems Biology, Harvard Medical School, 2005-2007