Principal investigator

Dr. Amy J. Karlsson
Associate Professor, Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering
Affiliate Faculty Member, Fischell Department of Bioengineering

BS, Chemical Engineering, Iowa State University, 2003
PhD, Chemical Engineering, University of Wisconsin - Madison, 2009
NIH Postdoctoral Fellow, Cornell University, 2009-2012

Dr. Karlsson is originally from Rush City, Minnesota, a very small town north of the Twin Cities. Although she misses the snow, she loves being so close to all the great restaurants and museums found in the DC area. When she's not busy with research or teaching, Dr. Karlsson likes to travel with her husband, read, make pottery, and attempt to keep her yard from getting overrun by ivy.
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Graduate students


​Sayanee Adhikari 
PhD Candidate, Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering
MS, Chemical Engineering, University of Maryland, 2017
BTech, Petrochemical Engineering, Maharashtra Institute of Technology - Pune, 2010

Sayanee arrived at the University of Maryland after working at a petroleum company in India and enjoying a short layover in the Windy City of Chicago. She's now left the world of petrochemicals behind to become a protein engineer.
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Dinara Konakbayeva
PhD Candidate, Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering
MS, Chemical Engineering, Howard University, 2019
BS, Chemical Engineering, Nazarbayev University, 2017

Originally hailing from Kazakhstan, Dinara has been enjoying the DC area for a few years--but she's been a little disappointed in our weather. She's longing for a great winter with LOTS of snow. We can't guarantee the snow, but we can guarantee she'll see lots of proteins!
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Wright Makambi
PhD Candidate, Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering
BS, Chemical Engineering, University of Maryland, 2019

Wright joins our lab as a local, having grown up just down the road in Silver Spring. Even though he's relatively new to the lab, we've already figured out he's a little quackers, and we expect he'll soon have even our fungal cells quacking up with his humor.
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Mahdi Ghorbani
PhD Candidate, Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering
BS, Chemical Engineering, University of Tehran, 2017

Co-advised by Jeff Klauda, Mahdi is our bridge between the computational and experimental realms. We're hoping he'll hold our hands and walk us to the other side of the bridge once in a while!

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​Marzyeh Kheradmand-Hajibashi 
MS Candidate, Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering
BS, Chemical Engineering, Arak University, 2019

Marzy came to College Park from Iran and quickly made herself at home among the Terrapins. Like most chemical engineering students, Marzy joined the lab with little background in molecular biology, but she changed that fast. In fact, she holds the lab record for "Shortest Time to Becoming a Cloning Expert"!
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Undergraduate students


Funke Okunrinboye
​BS Candidate, Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering​ 
BS Candidate, Biochemistry

Funke joined our lab in the fall of 2018 after learning a little about our work in Dr. Karlsson's separations course. Her background in both engineering and biochemistry are the perfect combination for our lab.
 
Andrea Fox
​BS Candidate, Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering

Andrea is from Ellicott City, Maryland, and we were happy to have her join the group in the summer of 2019. When she's not watching fungal cells grow or doing work for her classes, you can catch her dancing with Ballet Company M.
 
Martina Mensah
​BS Candidate, Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering

Martina joined the lab in the summer of 2020 has the honor of being our first lab member to join during a pandemic. She may be our most junior lab member, but she's making excellent progress in learning about peptide design.

High school students



We currently have no high school students in the lab. We will not be accepting new high students for the 2020-2021 academic year, but we expect to have positions available in the following academic year.
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Interested in the amazing people that previously were members of our lab?
Find them on the ALUMNI page.