Fernanda Piorino received a B.S. from Cornell University and a Ph.D. from Georgia Institute of Technology, both in Chemical Engineering. As a graduate student, she developed bacteria-based biosensors for point-of-care diagnostics and began her journey studying cell-free expression systems.
She is currently a PREP postdoctoral associate supporting the Cellular Engineering Group. Her work focuses on improving the predictability and reproducibility of cell-free systems to enable the more reliable development of complex cell-free technologies by (1) automating, benchmarking and integrating characterization assays for reagent quality and extract performance and (2) enabling and quantifying DNA replication towards the development of encapsulated extract-based synthetic cells.