Siliang Li was selected as a 2026 Rice Innovation Fellow! This program is hosted by the Liu Idea Lab for Innovation & Entrepreneurship (Lilie Lab) and brings together top talent from Rice’s labs to help convert their research into breakthrough solutions for real-world problems.

Robyn Alba was awarded one of the first Olson Awards! The Olson Award recognizes outstanding contributions to publications and leadership activities within the Biochemistry & Cell Biology PhD program.

Both awards are well-deserved. We love to see our group members’ efforts and skills recognized!

Congrats to Biki for his publication “Extracellular respiration is a latent energy metabolism in Escherichia coli” out in Cell! This in-depth study of E. coli’s anaerobic metabolism presents a unified methodology to investigate the mechanism of mediated extracellular electron transfer and reveals a new extracellular respiratory pathway based on 2-hydroxy-1,4-naphthoquinone. Read all about it here.

Huge congratulations to DOCTORS Siliang Li and Chiagoziem Ngwadom for passing their thesis defense. They both have done amazing research in our group and we are excited to see what their next chapter brings.

Congratulations to Xu, Olivia, and Rong for their collaborative paper with the Verduzco group! “Amplification of enzymatic and microbial fuel cells using organic electrochemical transistors” demonstrates interesting approaches to building thin-film sensing devices by coupling OECTs electronically with either an enzymatic fuel cell or microbial fuel cell. By amplifying microbial currents and enhancing signal quality, their simple and compact living device using synthetically engineered bacteria can detect arsenite in water! Read about it here.

Chloe passed her A-exam and is now a doctoral candidate! Her research project endeavors to create extreme-tolerant engineered living materials by combining biopolymers with modified Dienococcus radiodurans cells. We’re all very excited to see what she creates!

Congratulations to Esther, Carlson, Bobby, Marimikel, and Alanna on their publication “Genetically Modifying the Protein Matrix of Macroscopic Living Materials to Control Their Structure and Rheological Properties” now out in the “Materials Design by Synthetic Biology” special Issue of ACS Synthetic Biology. This is Esther’s inaugural first author paper and demonstrates fine-grained genetic control over the microstructures and material properties of an engineered living material. Read the article here!

Congratulations to Siliang and Matt for publishing “Microbial bioelectronic sensors for environmental monitoring” in Nature Reviews Bioengineering! They cover system design from the lens of chassis selection, electron transfer engineering, cell–electrode interfaces, and fabrication methods, and offer possible solutions for real-world sensing of complex contaminants. Read the article here.