Sriram Lab
Principal investigator: Ganesh Sriram
Associate Professor and Keystone Professor, Department of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering
University of Maryland
Office and mailing address: 1208D Chemical and Nuclear Engineering Bldg. 090
University of Maryland, College Park, MD 20742-2111
Phone: (301) 405-1261; Fax: (301) 405-0523; Email: gsriram[at]umd[dot]edu
Research interests. The Sriram lab works in the areas of metabolic engineering and systems biology, especially of eukaryotes. Our specialties are metabolic flux analysis and gene regulatory network analysis. Toward performing such analyses, we combine experimental methods such as isotope labeling, two-dimensional (2-D) NMR, gas chromatography-mass spectrometry (GC-MS), DNA microarray analysis and quantitative RT-PCR (qPCR) together with computational methods. See our research page for more information.
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Lab news
2013 December Shilpa's, Ashish's and Xiaofeng's (equal contributors) paper on the role of reflux in metabolic flux analysis is accepted for publication in Molecular BioSystems.
2013 November Yuting successfully defends her PhD thesis. Congrats!
2013 November Andrew's and Yuting's (equal contributors) paper on investigation of glucose-metabolizing pathways in the marine diatom Phaeodactylum tricornutum is accepted for publication in Microbial Cell Factories. Congrats!
2013 November Ashish's paper on computational gene regulatory network analysis in Arabidopsis is accepted for publication in BMC Systems Biology. Congrats! This article is highly accessed as of 30 November 2013.
2013 August Ganesh's book on plant metabolism methods to appear by the end of 2013.
2013 June Ashish's and Matt's paper is accepted in Frontiers in Microbiology. Congrats!
2012 November Shilpa successfully defends her PhD thesis. Congrats!
2012 October Shilpa's paper is accepted in Molecular BioSystems.
2012 August Dr. Sriram and Dr. Zhongchi Liu (Cell Biology and Molecular Genetics, University of Maryland) are awarded an NSF grant to investigate carbon-concentrating mechanisms in a photosynthetically efficient diatom.
2012 April Whitney Hollinshead, undergraduate researcher, wins the Clark School's Outstanding ASPIRE Student Research Award. ChBE article
2012 January Andrew Quinn, graduate researcher, wins a Hulka Fellowship from the University of Maryland Energy Research Center (UMERC). UMERC YouTube video ChBE article
2012 January Andrew Quinn joins the lab as graduate researcher.
2011 December Maggie Simons, undergraduate researcher, wins the second place Outstanding Undergraduate Researcher Award of the Department of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering. ChBE article
2011 October Matt Conway, undergraduate researcher, wins a first place poster award at the undergraduate poster session at the AIChE annual meeting.
2011 August Dr. Sriram is named Keystone Professor by the A. James Clark School of Engineering. ChBE article
2011 May Dr. Sriram is announced as the recipient of the 2011 Outstanding Young Engineer Award and the Allan C. Davis Medal by the Maryland Academy of Sciences and the Maryland Science Center. ChBE article Clark School article
2011 April Congratulations to graduate researchers Shilpa Nargund and Yuting Zheng for being awarded two of the three Best Teaching Assistant awards by the ChBE department for their service as graduate teaching assistants in 2010-11.
2011 April Matt Conway, undergraduate researcher, is awarded the prestigious Howard Hughes Medical Institute (HHMI) Fellowship to support his research in the lab. Article on ChBE website
2011 April Ho-Man Yeung, undergraduate researcher, is one of the three University of Maryland Library Awards for Undergraduate Research. This $1,000 award honors undergraduates for producing quality research projects by effectively using library resources. Ho-Man received the award in a ceremony during Undergraduate Research Day on April 27. Congrats Ho-Man and his mentor Shilpa! Article on ChBE website
2011 February Yuting Zheng, graduate researcher, wins a best presentation award at ResearchFest. Photos on ChBE website
2011 January Shilpa Nargund and Yuting Zheng, graduate researchers, both pass their Ph.D. proposal exams and advance to candidacy. Congratulations!
2010 August Dr. Sriram is part of an interdisciplinary team that was awarded a $1.9 million NSF grant toward the purchase of a high-resolution (800 MHz) nuclear magnetic resonance NMR spectrometer. The team is lead by Dr. Kwaku Dayie (Chemistry and Biochemistry, University of Maryland), and includes Dr. David Fushman, Dr. Vitali Tugarinov (both from Chemistry and Biochemistry) and Dr. Sriram. This instrument will facilitate enhanced study of biomolecular structures such as protein and RNA and the measurement of isotopic labels for metabolic pathway analysis. Details: article on umd.edu, article on ChBE website.
2010 May The Baltimore Sun publishes a front-page story on the NSF poplar project. Project and lab pictures from the print and online versions of the paper: 1, 2, 3, 4.
2010 April Ali Eslami, undergraduate researcher, is awarded a $3,000 grant from A Scholars Program for Industry-Oriented Research in Engineering (ASPIRE), University of Maryland, to fund his summer research.
2010 April Emily Lin, undergraduate researcher, was selected as one of the University of Maryland’s five “2010 Student Researchers of the Year”. This carries a $500 award, which Emily received in a ceremony at Undergraduate Research Day on April 22.
2010 April Ganesh's paper is accepted in Metabolic Engineering.
2010 March Yuting's paper is accepted in Journal of Biomedicine and Biotechnology.
2010 February News release about the NSF poplar grant: official press release, article on umd.edu, article on ChBE website. Press coverage: NBC Washington.
2010 February Dr. Ashish Misra joins the lab as postdoctoral researcher to work on the NSF poplar project.
2010 February Xiaofeng Zhang, graduate researcher, is awarded a McAvoy Family Fellowship, which will partially fund his first year in graduate school.
2010 February Xiaofeng Zhang joins the lab as graduate researcher.
2009 September Ian MacIntire, undergraduate researcher, is awarded a $1,000 grant from A Scholars Program for Industry-Oriented Research in Engineering (ASPIRE), University of Maryland, for the second time. This grant will fund his research in the lab in Fall 2009.
2009 August Dr. Sriram is part of a team that was awarded a $3.2 million NSF grant to study nitrogen storage and cycling in poplar, an economically viable, non-food future source of biofuel feedstock. The team is led by Dr. Gary Coleman (Plant Science and Landscape Architecture [PSLA], University of Maryland) and includes as co-PIs Dr. Sriram, Dr. Jianhua Zhu (PSLA) and Dr. George Ude (Bowie State University). The work funded by this grant will quantify gene expression, metabolic flux and protein phosphorylation during nitrogen storage and cycling in poplar, integrate the multiscale data from these approaches and then use reverse genetics to identify gene function.
2009 August Emily Lin, undergraduate researcher, is awarded a $2,500 Louis Stokes Alliance for Minority Participation (LSAMP) grant for the second time. This award will fund her research in the lab during the 2009-10 academic year.
2009 July Dr. Sriram and Baltimore-based Fyodor Biotechnologies Inc. have been awarded a $170,105 Maryland Industrial Partnerships (MIPS) seed grant to explore and optimize the production of the antimalarial therapeutic artemisinin in yeast through a novel metabolic route. Mtech press release
2009 April Ian MacIntire, undergraduate researcher, is awarded a $3,000 grant from A Scholars Program for Industry-Oriented Research in Engineering (ASPIRE), University of Maryland, to fund his summer research.
2009 March Emily Lin, undergraduate researcher, is awarded a Summer Undergraduate Research Fellowship (SURF) from the American Society of Plant Biologists (ASPB) to support her summer research. This award carries over $4,000 in fellowship, research and travel funds. UM story
2009 February Yuting Zheng, holder of a Jan and Anneke Sengers Fellowship, joins the lab as graduate researcher.
2009 February Shilpa Nargund, graduate researcher, wins first place at ResearchFest. UM story
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Open positions
Postdocs and graduate researchers
There are currently no open positions.
We will be seeking one graduate student in 2014-15 to work on metabolic and gene regulatory pathway analysis in diatoms. To be a graduate student in the Sriram Lab, you must be admitted to a graduate (Ph.D. or M.S.) program in chemical engineering or a related area at University of Maryland. If you are seeking admission and would like assistance or information about future projects, please contact Dr. Sriram.
Undergraduate researchers
We are seeking an undergraduate researcher to work on a computational project involving mining of metabolic pathway databases and assembly of genome-scale metabolic models. To apply, you should be an undergraduate student at University of Maryland, preferably with exposure to chemical engineering and cell biology. Please contact Dr. Sriram for details. <html> </div> </html>