Outreach: Reddit AMA
Vayu participated in a Reddit AMA answering questions about the present and future of biomanufacturing ! It was awesome!
Our fearless professor Vayu was invited to host a reddit Ask-Me-Anything (AMA) on Reddit! Together with a panel of biotechnology experts spanning a range of industries and areas of expertise, Vayu answered questions related to biomanufacturing and the future of sustainable production!
Lab photos!
New photos of our lab space are live! Thanks to our awesome rotation student Franklin for taking these!
Our star rotation student, Franklin, brought his skills and camera to our lab and shot some photos of the space. Check it out! See on our lab page.
Welcome, Jon
Jon is joining us as a Schmidt Science Fellow - exciting to have another member of our awesome postdoc team!
We have another legendary postdoc joining our team, this time as a Schmidt Science Fellow. Excited to have you onboard, Jon! Read below for more info.
Jon was born and raised in the Basque Country, Spain. He received his PhD in Medical Engineering and Medical Physics from the joint Harvard-MIT program in Health Sciences and Technology under Prof. Pardis Sabeti. His PhD research focused on developing genomic technologies for early pathogen detection. During this time, he developed SHINE, a suite of CRISPR-based diagnostic platforms for viral detection in decentralized settings. In 2024, Jon worked as a Biosecurity Game Changers Fellow at the Pandemic Center at Brown University, where he developed a Global Diagnostic Gap Assessment report in collaboration with the International Pandemic Preparedness Secretariat (IPPS) and FIND. The report provides evidence-based and actionable priorities to boost the development and global access of diagnostics for outbreak-prone pathogens. Jon is excited to join the Hill-Maini Lab as a postdoc and Schmidt Science Fellow, where he will employ computational and experimental approaches to characterize and engineer filamentous fungi for sustainability and food applications. He hopes to combine bioengineering approach and policy to address critical challenges in global food systems, sustainable agriculture and food security. Outside the lab, Jon enjoys cooking (and eating), dancing, sports, and watching films.
CONGRATS TO US
Our lab strikes again! Deniz won best poster at the BioE department retreat at Stanford ! Vayu won best faculty flash talk! Go us !!!! Our second year student Deniz crushed it, facing stiff competition from students across all years.
Deniz won best poster at the BioE department retreat at Stanford ! Vayu won best faculty flash talk! Go us !!!!
CONGRATS JAQUELINE
Our lab strikes again! Congrats Jaqueline for winning best poster at the ECOFAB conference in Asilomar. We are not surprised - you are crushing it in your project on Trichoderma for biocontrol!
Jaqueline was invited to give a talk at the ECOFAB conference in Asilomar, and was one of the winners of best poster! She shared her amazing work developing genetic tools for Trichoderma to study its interactions in the rhizosphere.
fungal merch
so excited to have our first ever lab t-shirt, featuring some upcycled fermented prototypes on the front, and the abstract of Vayu’s 2024 Nature Microbiology paper on the back!
so excited to have our first ever lab t-shirt, featuring some upcycled fermented prototypes on the front, and the abstract of Vayu’s 2024 Nature Microbiology paper on the back!
We won a Bio-X snack grant for waste-to-food!
Congrats to us!!! Vayu, AK, Alessandra, Braydon blew it out of the park sharing their vision for a less wasteful and more nutritious food system! We won funding for our work, from Bio-X!
We are so excited to have been one of the winners of the inaugural Bio-X snack grant competition, focused on food innovation for human and planetary health! Our star team of Vayu, AK, Alessandra, Braydon blew it out of the park sharing their vision for a less wasteful and more nutritious food system!
Hill-Maini Lab openhouse
Was special to have so many friends, collaborators, family, heroes, and supporters share space and place with us. We loved showing our new lab and community!
Had an awesome time hosting our official openhouse for friends, family, collaborators, and supporters. As always, we came together as a team to execute a perfect spread of experimental Neurospora ferments and more familiar fungal foods. Beautiful to see so many people there!
Stanford fermented foods conference
Our star postdoc Taylor was part of the team organizing the first ever Stanford fermented foods conference, the best conference ever! A beautiful time! Shoutout to Elisa Caffrey and Justin Sonnenburg and Dave Zilber for organizing as well. Vayu gave a talk and was on a panel (with some of his heroes)
Taylor Hanh Nguyen, our postdoc, was part of the team organizing the inaugural Stanford fermented foods conference, which will go down in history as the best conference EVER! It brought together 150 chefs, scientists, producers, and industry leaders for two packed days of discussion and engagement around fermentation for human health, flavor, and sustainability. Vayu gave a talk and spoke at a panel. Thanks Taylor!
Goodbye Alessandra, AK
We are sad to see you leave but grateful for the amazing gastronomy and science you contributed to our group over the last three months! Come back!
We are so sad to have our star kitchen team of Alessandra (visiting PhD student from the Basque culinary center) and AK (co-term student in chemical engineering at Stanford) leave us… They were amazing, cooking up a storm in our kitchen space and doing groundbreaking science. We will miss you! Come back!
Mugaritz visiting the Hill-Maini Lab
We were honored to host head chef (Andoni Aduriz) and head of creativity (Ramon Perise) from Mugaritz in our lab during the first week of September. This marked the kick-off for our CHEF IN RESIDENCE PROGRAM!
We had a blast hosting the head chef (Andoni Aduriz) and head of creativity (Ramon Perise) from Mugaritz in our lab during the first week of September. This marked the kick-off for our new chef-in-residence program. We were so inspired learning about Mugaritz groundbreaking approaches to creativity and also sharing our work and vision. Can’t wait to work together over this coming year.
Welcome, Taylor!
Welcome Taylor, our new star postdoc! We are so excited to learn from and with you.
We are so proud and grateful that another star postdoc has decided to join our lab: Taylor Hanh Nguyen. She joins us from far away … KC huang’s lab in our department… Welcome!!!!
Taylor completed her PhD in Bioengineering at Stanford with Prof. KC Huang with a focus on uncovering the ecological determinants that govern community assembly in the gut microbiome. In her PhD, she worked on a diverse set of projects under this theme, including building computational models to predict community assembly, characterizing the effect of drugs on the gut microbiome, profiling Salmonella transcriptional dynamics during invasion, and using bacteriophages for precision editing of the gut microbiome. In her postdoctoral research, she hopes to apply her training in quantitative systems biology to understand fungal interactions in fermented foods using Neurospora as a model system. Broadly, she is interested in uncovering the fundamental biology behind the ancient wisdom of fermented foods, empowering the application of these insights to advance both human and planetary health!
AK wins best poster at the Bio-X seed grants symposium
AK was one of 11 winners among around 300 posters at the Bio-X symposium!! We are not surprised: she is a star. And she had a salami prototype hanging on her poster.
HUGE SHOUT-OUT to our star co-term student AK, who was one of the winners for best poster at the Bio-X seed grants symposium. Quite the accomplishments: there were around 300 posters from the Stanford community.
Are we surprised? Not really. She had a salami prototype hanging on her poster.
Open house v1
Shout-out to Jenn Brophy, Mike Jewett, Drew Endy, and all their lab members for hosting us in bioengineering when we got started at Stanford. We welcomed them to our new space in Clark center to celebrate!
To welcome people to our new space, we hosted a small open house for our friends in Bioengineering who supported and hosted us in their labs as we got started. Shout-out to Jenn Brophy, Mike Jewett, Drew Endy, and all their lab members!
We moved into our new lab space!
We are excited to have a permanent home! The first phase of construction (the lab) is done, and hopefully the kitchen will be done soon too! Stay tuned for more photos!
We are proud and happy to finally be in our own lab space, in the Clark Center 3rd floor. We had a blast moving in and decorating our lab. Already feels like home!
Outreach: Bio-X day
Shout-out to Shahar, AK, and Alessandra who ran the Hill-Maini Lab booth at the Bio-X Science day, engaging diverse kids and families from the area with fungi and fun
Shout-out to Shahar, AK, and Alessandra who ran the Hill-Maini Lab booth at the Bio-X Science day, which invited hundreds of local families to learn about the science happening through Bio-X, our future lab home! Fungi and fun all the day!
Congratulations, Peter!
Peter wins the prestigious Bio-X PhD fellowship for his work on developing high-throughput methods to engineer basidiomycete mushrooms. Excited to collaborate with the Fordyce lab on this work!
Our very own Peter Allen, the first PhD student to join the lab, just won the Bio-X PhD fellowship, one of the most prestigious fellowships awarded to Stanford PhD students. The fellowship funds Peter for the next three years and supports his work developing high-throughput genetics for basidiomycete mushrooms to enable bioengineering for sustainability. Way to go, Peter!
This year's 20 exemplary awardees represent 13 different Stanford departments and programs, and they will collaborate with 48 Stanford faculty mentors to bridge disciplines and undertake groundbreaking innovative research as a part of the Stanford Bio-X community. With the addition of our 2025 cohort, the Stanford Bio-X PhD Fellowship Program has now awarded a total of 426 meritorious Stanford students, supporting their unique and transformative interdisciplinary research projects and scientific careers.
Shreya and Deniz join the lab!
Juicy updates: Shreya and Deniz, PhD students in the Bioengineering program, were crazy enough to come back to our lab after their rotations, to join full time! Lucky us!
The awesomeness continues! Shreya and Deniz, who rotated in the lab as part of the Bioengineering PhD program in the winter, are joining our lab full-time! We are so excited that 3/3 of our awesome rotation students who rotated this year have chosen to join the lab. Excited to learn with you for years to come.
Welcome: Alessandra
Excited to host Alessandra, a trained chef and current PhD student in Gastronomic Sciences at the Basque culinary center, in our lab over the summer!
Our gastronomy vibe just reached a whole new level. We are thrilled to welcome Alessandra Massa, a trained chef and current PhD student in gastronomic sciences at the Basque Culinary Center. Alessandra will be with us for three months working on prototype development for waste upcycling. Somebody get a fire extinguisher: this summer is about to be FIRE!
More below:
Alessandra is a PhD student in Gastronomic Sciences at the Basque Culinary Center (Mondragon University). Her doctoral work focuses on exploring filamentous fungi as sustainable food sources to enhance gastronomic biodiversity. She aims to bridge science and gastronomy by integrating analytical chemistry, microbial biotechnology, sensory analysis, and food product development to find sustainable solutions to the way we eat. She has worked as a teacher of food development and technology at the Basque Culinary Center and as a food scientist at Esencia Foods, a startup focused on developing mycelium-based seafood alternatives. Alessandra has also collaborated on science-driven gastronomy projects in Michelin-starred restaurants such as Azurmendi, Mugaritz, and Culler de Pau, where fermentation is used as a tool to create new products and reduce food waste. Her favorite fungi are Rhizopus oligosporus and Neurospora intermedia, known for their ability to develop rich aromas and textures in novel food products.
Welcome: Braydon
Excited to have our second postdoc join the lab, bringing skills in engineering and studying difficult non-model fungi! Braydon is shifting from his PhD work on fungal pathogens, to harness fungal potential for waste upcycling in our group!
We are excited to add another talented postdoc to our team: Braydon Black, who joins us from the lab of James Kronstad at University of British Columbia. Braydon is making the transition from studying fungal threats towards harnessing fungal potential: in our lab, he will engineer waste conversion by edible fungi. He is funded by the prestigious Accelerator Postdoctoral Fellowship from the Stanford Doerr School of Sustainability.
More below:
Braydon completed his PhD in Microbiology & Immunology at the University of British Columbia under Prof. Jim Kronstad. During his PhD, Braydon uncovered key mechanisms driving metabolic adaptation and virulence of a pathogenic fungus, and developed a suite of molecular tools with potential broad application across fungi. He has also worked as a medical and science writer, developing training materials for biotech and pharma companies. As a Sustainability Accelerator Fellow at Stanford, he is excited to apply his extensive knowledge of fungal molecular biology to develop new approaches for converting food waste into nutritious, delicious, and sustainable fermented foods using filamentous fungi.