Bio 
Nick Housley earned his B.S. in Kinesiology from The University of Georgia, his D.P.T. from Georgia State University where he focused on clinical neuroplasticity, his Ph.D. in Applied Physiology from Georgia Institute of Technology before completing his postdoctoral fellowship in cancer neurobiology.  Nick started his independent career on the faculty of Georgia Institute of Technology in January 2025, where his group studies how nervous system, cancer, and its treatment interact in mammalian systems and develops nanostructures for multimodal applications in solid tumor cancers and neurologic disorders. 

The IBB Breakfast Club Seminar Series was started with the spirit of the Institute's interdisciplinary mission in mind to feature local IBB faculty member's research in a seminar format. Faculty are often asked to speak at other universities and conferences, but do not often present at their home institution - this seminar series is an attempt to close that gap. IBB Breakfast Club Seminars are open to anyone in the bio-community.

Research 
A majority of antibiotics and drugs that we use in the clinic are derived or inspired from small organic molecules called Natural Products that are produced by living organisms such as bacteria and plants. Natural Products are at the forefront of fighting the global epidemic of antibiotic resistant pathogens, and keeping the inventory of clinically applicable pharmaceuticals stocked up. Some Natural Products are also potent human toxins and pollutants, and we need to understand how these toxins are produced to minimize our and the environmental exposure to them.

The IBB Breakfast Club Seminar Series was started with the spirit of the Institute's interdisciplinary mission in mind to feature local IBB faculty member's research in a seminar format. Faculty are often asked to speak at other universities and conferences, but do not often present at their home institution - this seminar series is an attempt to close that gap. IBB Breakfast Club Seminars are open to anyone in the bio-community.

Bio 
Erin Buckley's research focuses on exploring the clinical utility of non-invasive diffuse optical techniques for low-cost, bedside monitoring of hemodynamics in the brain and other tissues. By bridging engineering innovation with clinical need, Dr. Buckley’s work aims to improve outcomes after brain injury. She is also the Producer of the Holy Shift! podcast that explores how biomedical breakthroughs impact our communities and everyday lives. In addition to her research and outreach, Buckley is a dedicated educator and mentor, committed to training the next generation of biomedical engineers and clinician-scientists at the intersection of technology and human health. 

The IBB Breakfast Club Seminar Series was started with the spirit of the Institute's interdisciplinary mission in mind to feature local IBB faculty member's research in a seminar format. Faculty are often asked to speak at other universities and conferences, but do not often present at their home institution - this seminar series is an attempt to close that gap. IBB Breakfast Club Seminars are open to anyone in the bio-community.

Bio 
Tara Deans received her Ph.D. from Boston University in Biomedical Engineering and did her postdoctoral training at Johns Hopkins University. Her research focuses on building genetic tools to study the mechanisms of stem cell differentiation for the purpose of directing cell fate decisions. She is the recipient of several awards including the NSF CAREER Award, the Office of Naval Research (ONR) Young Investigator Award, the NIH Trailblazer Award, and the NIH Director’s New Innovator Award. Dr. Deans holds a number of issued patents, some of which have been licensed by biotech companies. 

The IBB Breakfast Club Seminar Series was started with the spirit of the Institute's interdisciplinary mission in mind to feature local IBB faculty member's research in a seminar format. Faculty are often asked to speak at other universities and conferences, but do not often present at their home institution - this seminar series is an attempt to close that gap. IBB Breakfast Club Seminars are open to anyone in the bio-community.

Bio 
Lynn Kamerlin received her Master of Natural Sciences from the University of Birmingham (UK), in 2002, where she remained to complete a PhD in Theoretical Organic Chemistry under the supervision of Dr. John Wilkie (awarded 2005). Subsequently, she was a postdoctoral researcher in the labs of Stefan Boresch at the University of Vienna (2005-2007), Arieh Warshel at the University of Southern California (2007-2009, Research Associate at the University of Southern California in 2010) and Researcher with Fahmi Himo (2010). She is a Professor and Georgia Research Alliance – Vasser Wooley Chair of Molecular Design at Georgia Tech, a Visiting Professor at Lund University (from January 2025), a Fellow of the Royal Society of Chemistry (FRSC) and of the Institute of Physics (FInstP), a Senior Editor of Protein Science, and the Editor-in-Chief of Electronic Structure. She has also been a Wallenberg Scholar, the recipient of an ERC Starting Independent Researcher Grant (2012-2017) and the Chair of the Young Academy of Europe (YAE) in 2014-2015. Her non-scientific interests include languages (fluent in 5), amateur photography and playing the piano.

Research 
Research in our group sits at the interface between chemistry and biology, with a focus on using computational tools to understand the chemical basis for complex biomolecular problems. In particular, we want to understand the dynamical and mechanistic parameters that shape the evolution of new enzyme functions, and to then harness these to engineer new enzymes with tailored physiochemical properties. To achieve this, we combine methodology development with applications to real world systems, in close collaboration with experimental groups across the world. Examples of recent and ongoing methodology development include replica exchange empirical valence bond simulations to describe chemical reactivity, and machine learning tools to design new enzymes.

More recently, we are working on natural language models to predict protein structure and activity. We combine these tools with a range of enhanced sampling approaches, structural bioinformatics tools and EVB and QM/MM tools to describe conformational dynamics and chemical reactivity, with applications to biomedically important enzymes such as protein tyrosine phosphatases, or quorum-quenching lactonases that can be used to disrupt bacterial communication. We are also particularly interested in the modular evolution of new protein scaffolds with catalytic function, as well as the incorporation of non-canonical amino acids into industrially relevant enzymes for design purposes.

Finally, enzymes are chemical catalysts, and to understand their biological function it is important to understand the intrinsic chemistry they catalyze. We have a long-standing interest, in particular, in understanding the underlying factors driving mechanistic selectivity in both biological and non-enzymatic phosphoryl (and related) group transfer reactions, as well as other fundamental problems in physical organic chemistry.

The IBB Breakfast Club Seminar Series was started with the spirit of the Institute's interdisciplinary mission in mind to feature local IBB faculty member's research in a seminar format. Faculty are often asked to speak at other universities and conferences, but do not often present at their home institution - this seminar series is an attempt to close that gap. IBB Breakfast Club Seminars are open to anyone in the bio-community.

Research
In the Omni Lab for Intelligent Visual Engineering and Science (OLIVES), AlRegib and his group work on robust and interpretable machine learning algorithms, uncertainty and trust, and human in the loop algorithms. The group has demonstrated their work on a wide range of applications such as Autonomous Systems, Medical Imaging, and Subsurface Imaging. The group is interested in advancing the fundamentals as well as the deployment of such systems in real-world scenarios. His research group is working on projects related to machine learning, image and video processing, image and video understanding, subsurface imaging, perception in visual data processing, healthcare intelligence, and video analytics. The primary applications of the research span from Autonomous Vehicles to Portable AI-based Ophthalmology and Eye Exam and from Microscopic Imaging to Seismic Interpretation. The group has been a leader in developing modern machine learning for seismic interpretation. The team has created a number of open-source datasets. 

The IBB Breakfast Club Seminar Series was started with the spirit of the Institute's interdisciplinary mission in mind to feature local IBB faculty member's research in a seminar format. Faculty are often asked to speak at other universities and conferences, but do not often present at their home institution - this seminar series is an attempt to close that gap. IBB Breakfast Club Seminars are open to anyone in the bio-community.

Bio 
Aniruddh Sarkar is an Assistant Professor in the Wallace H. Coulter Department of Biomedical Engineering at the Georgia Institute of Technology and Emory University where he leads the Micro/Nano Bioelectronics Lab. He was earlier a Research Fellow at the Ragon Institute of MGH, MIT and Harvard with research affiliations at Harvard Medical School and at MIT. His research has evolved around the theme of exploiting unique physical phenomena that occur at the micrometer to nanometer length scales to develop devices and systems for solving various technological problems with a special focus on applications in biology and medicine. His earlier work, with Prof. Galit Alter (MGH/HMS) and Prof. Jongyoon Han (MIT), involved the development and application of microfabricated and nanofabricated devices to further the prevention, diagnosis and therapy of infectious diseases such as Tuberculosis and HIV/AIDS. He received his Ph.D in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science with a minor in Biology at MIT, developing microfluidic tools for single-cell analysis. He received his bachelors and masters degrees, both in Electrical Engineering at IIT Bombay.

The IBB Breakfast Club Seminar Series was started with the spirit of the Institute's interdisciplinary mission in mind to feature local IBB faculty member's research in a seminar format. Faculty are often asked to speak at other universities and conferences, but do not often present at their home institution - this seminar series is an attempt to close that gap. IBB Breakfast Club Seminars are open to anyone in the bio-community.