Phuong is a postdoctoral researcher at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (LBNL), where she works at the Advanced BioProcess Development Unit (ABPDU). Her research focuses on microbial engineering and bioprocess development for fuels and chemicals. At ABPDU, she contributes to the development of high-throughput anaerobic fermentation workflows and AI/ML-guided media optimization for Clostridium tyrobutyricum. She also supports a project on the microbial recovery of rare earth elements, with a focus on developing genetic engineering tools for Methylobacterium species.
Her research experience spans synthetic biology, metabolic engineering, CRISPR-Cas genome editing, fermentation, and high-throughput screening. Before joining ABPDU, Phuong worked at the Joint BioEnergy Institute, where she engineered Saccharomyces cerevisiae for enhanced SAF compound isoprenol production through pathway compartmentalization and protein engineering. She was also a visiting research scholar in Alper Lab at UT Austin, where she applied droplet microfluidics and fluorescence-activated droplet sorting to high-throughput yeast screening. During her Ph.D. research at KIST, she developed S. cerevisiae platform strains for lignocellulosic biorefineries aimed at the production of advanced biofuels, biopolymers, and medicinal compounds.
Education
- PhD in Energy and Environment Technology, Korea Institute of Science and Technology (KIST)
- MS in Energy and Environment Technology, KIST
- BS in Biology, Vietnam National University
Professional Experience
- Postdoctoral Researcher, Joint BioEnergy Institute (JBEI)
- Visiting Scholar, University of Texas at Austin (UT Austin)
- Graduate research assistant, Korea Institute of Science and Technology (KIST)