Judee Sharon is a Ph.D. candidate in the Department of Biochemistry, Molecular Biology, and Biophysics at the University of Minnesota. She works with Dr. Katarzyna Adamala on research relating to synthetic cell systems and biological computing. She was drawn to this work in synthetic biology because of its potential in explaining how the principles of life operate. Much like we would rebuild a car engine to learn how each individual part contributes to a working whole, creating a synthetic cell that mimics a living one will (hopefully) show us how cells work. She is also working on building a primitive biological computer by tethering the concepts of Boolean logic with well understood concepts in biology. In the distant future, she hopes that biocomputing research will build toward highly integrated prosthetics, intricately programmed bacteria, and biological supercomputers.

Judee grew up in a few different towns in Northern California and attended the University of California, Berkeley for her undergraduate studies. Before coming to graduate school, she worked on soil microbiology research through the USDA and several start up companies. After finishing her Ph.D., she is looking forward to re-entering the biotechnology industry and applying her newly minted experience in synthetic cell research. The ARCS Scholar Award will enable her to attend conferences and workshops in the pursuit of her career developmen