Dr. Albert Keung

Dr. Keung is an associate professor of chemical and biomolecular engineering, a University Faculty Scholar and Goodnight Early Career Innovator at North Carolina State University. His group applies synthetic biology and stem cell engineering approaches in three focus areas. Current work includes engineering human stem cell models to study neuroepigenetic mechanisms of addiction and neurodevelopmental disorders with a focus on Angelman Syndrome, developing high throughput synthetic biology platforms to study epigenetics and dynamic information transmission through chromatin, and creating scalable and highly dense DNA-based information storage systems. A unifying conceptual framework within the Keung group is discovering and harnessing the diverse mechanisms by which biological information is stored, accessed and transmitted beyond the genetic sequence. Keung trained at Stanford University (B.S. in chemical engineering), University of California, Berkeley (Ph.D. in chemical engineering) and MIT/Boston University (postdoctoral training in bioengineering). The collective work of those in the Keung group have been recognized by the NSF CAREER award, ACS Synthetic Biology Young Investigator Award, NIH Avenir Award and the Cure Angelman Syndrome Innovation Award.