Graduate Students
Zahra Choolaei
Enzymatic Treatment of Pulp and Paper Mill Biosludge
Zahra’s research focuses on the enzymatic treatment of pulp and paper mill biosludge in order to improve its anaerobic digestibility. Under the supervision of Elizabeth Edwards and Alexander Yakunin, Zahra performs screening of novel and commercial enzymes, in order to apply them to pulp and paper mill biosludge, as a pretreatment step, prior to its anaerobic digestion.
E-mail: z.choolaei@mail.utoronto.ca
Phone: 416-978-4222
Patrick Diep
Metal capture and storage proteins from soil and pathogenic bacteria to enhance biomining
Patrick comes from the University of Waterloo’s biochemistry co-op program with a background in synthetic biology through iGEM. His current research is co-supervised by Dr. Radhakrishnan Mahadevan and Dr. Alexander Yakunin, and he is characterizing putative nickel capture/storage proteins. His goal is to genetically engineer Acidithiobacillus species to have nickel sequestration properties for biomining applications.
E-mail: patrick.diep@mail.utoronto.ca
Phone: 416-978-4015
Mahbod Hajighasemi
Protein and enzyme production and characterization
Mahbod’s research focuses on enzymatic degradation of bio-plastics including Poly Lactic Acid, Poly Hydroxybutyrate and their co-polymers. Bio-plastics from renewable sources are green alternatives to current petroleum-derived plastics. Under the supervision of Elizabeth Edwards and Alexander Yakunin, Mahbod performs functional screening of different metagenomic libraries as well as several purified proteins to identify new enzymes capable of depolymerizing bio-plastics. Heterologous expression, molecular and biochemical characterization as well as enzyme-polymer interactions, degradation intermediates and, finally, recycling processes are also part of his research.
E-mail: m.hajighasemi@utoronto.ca
Phone: 416-946-0074
Taeho Kim
Metabolic engineering of cyanobacteria and enzyme characterization
Taeho is co-supervised by Dr. Alexander Yakunin and Dr. Radhakrishnan Mahadevan and is studying metabolic engineering, screening and characterization of enzymes for the production of high-value chemicals or biofuels. Taeho’s research focus is to introduce heterogeneous genes into cyanobacteria strains to metabolically produce butanediols from photosynthetic conversion of CO2. This work ranges from genetic engineering of microorganism and metabolic modeling to engineering and biochemical characterization of enzymes.
E-mail: barca.kim@mail.utoronto.ca
Phone: 416-978-7566
Sofia Lemak
Characterization and Engineering of the RNA-guided Cascade Complex from Escherichia coli
Sofia received her Hon. B.Sc. degree in Medical Science from the University of Western Ontario. Her current research focuses on the CRISPR adaptive microbial immune system. This RNAi-like system targets and degrades foreign nucleic acids such as viruses and plasmids. Sofia’s goal is to experimentally characterize the biochemical activity and molecular mechanism of the core CRISPR Cas4 family proteins.
E-mail: slemak@alumni.uwo.ca
Phone: 416-978-4015