Biography
I’m a PhD student at MIT working in the Galloway Lab. Out of all of the systems that chemical engineers examine, I’ve found that biological systems are the most fascinating, complex, and challenging systems we could possibly dream of working with.
I’ve also always enjoyed coding. My favorite language was and still is C++; I’ve written several toy projects and contributed to several open-source development efforts with C++. I also enjoy Python, and use it pretty frequently as my go-to “glue”, data-analysis, or prototyping language.
When I’m not doing research or programming, I like to dabble: 3D modeling and animation, video editing, sailing, quadcopter construction, rocket building have all been recent interests of mine.
Interests
- Cellular circuit engineering
- Cellular reprogramming
- Computer science
Education
PhD student in chemical engineering, 2019-ongoing
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
BSc in Chemical Engineering, minor in Computer Science, 2019
Califonia Institute of Technology
Experience
PhD Student
Galloway Lab, Massachusetts Institute of Technology
- Investigating the role of biophysical feedback in gene expression and cellular reprogramming.
Metabolic engineering intern
Provivi
- Identified, cloned, and tested homologous lipid metabolism genes under overexpression conditions, creating a yeast strain that created nearly 30% more lipid dry mass.
- Wrote software that completes genome assembly even if genetic recombination and transposition has occurred with respect to a reference genome, saving days of manual assembly work.
Research student
Tirrell Lab, California Institute of Technology
- Demonstrated that a quorum-sensing circuit could be selectively activated in aggregated E. coli cells at low bulk cell densities.
- Designed a genetic system to drive programmed aggregation of B. theta cells, based on a protein display system validated in E. coli, and integrated a partial version of this circuit.
- Presented work on bacterial aggregation at the 255th ACS National Meeting.
- Prepared a senior thesis demonstrating the design of a photocontrollable bacterial aggregation system.
Software engineering intern
Pure Storage
- Implemented a customer-facing feature that more accurately accounted utilized storage space in a given storage cluster.
Projects
RNA Polymerase Animations
To convert the EXRs into a movie file, we use the following ffmpeg command: ffmpeg -f lavfi -i color=c=white:s=1920x1080 -r 60 -apply_trc iec61966_2_1 -i output/%04d.exr -filter_complex "[0:v][1:v]overlay=shortest=1" -vcodec libx264 -pix_fmt yuv420p -preset slow -crf 18 -r 60 output_filename.
Recent & Upcoming Talks
Recent Publications
Contact
- cjohnsto@mit.edu
- Building 66 (25 Ames St), Cambridge, MA 02139