Katy Christiansen will serve as the lead principal investigator (PI) for the Agile BioFoundry (ABF), following Nathan Hillson’s departure from Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab).
Hillson has taken on a new role at Twist Biosciences. He served as the lead PI of the ABF for 10 years, steering a multi-disciplinary team distributed across 7 U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) national laboratories toward the development of a public infrastructure to enable industrial biomanufacturing of affordable fuels and chemicals. Under his leadership, the ABF developed routes to metabolic beachheads, established its host onboarding and development tier system, and advanced the biofoundry field through its leadership in the Global Biofoundries Alliance.
Christiansen is the Biosciences Area Deputy for Science at Berkeley Lab. She also represents the Lab as a Laboratory Relationship Manager to DOE’s Alternative Fuels and Feedstocks Office (AFFO), formerly known as the Bioenergy Technologies Office.
Christiansen has managed a variety of key program development activities at Berkeley Lab, including the initial planning and establishment activities for the AFFO-supported ABF. She first joined the Lab in 2008 as a postdoctoral researcher at the Joint BioEnergy Institute. After two years as a AAAS Science & Technology Policy Fellow at DOE, she returned to the Biosciences Area in 2014 to help lead strategic planning efforts.
“I am thrilled to be taking on the lead PI role and am excited about working more closely with the ABF team,” Christiansen said. “The ABF is a key contributor to the success of the United States’ bioeconomy.”