Eva Ottum

I am Eva, a PhD student in Chemical and Environmental Engineering at the University of California, Riverside. With a background from Boston College and recognition as an NSF GRFP Fellow, Plants3D Fellow, and Koerner Family Foundation Fellow, I am deeply committed to advancing research in metabolic engineering and population genomics. My work centers on engineering high-productivity yeast strains to enhance industrial production of fuels, chemicals, and pharmaceuticals. Using large-scale population genomic surveys and phenotypic analysis, I identify and engineer metabolic targets that drive stress tolerance and rapid growth. My research aligns with ExFAB's mission through automated phenotyping and imaging workflows. By integrating my manually developed phenotyping protocols with ExFAB's biofoundry equipment, I aim to streamline data collection, improve reproducibility, and accelerate the identification of high-performing yeast strains. This collaboration will not only address current bottlenecks in phenotyping but also advance scalable, automated pipelines for future industrial and synthetic biology applications.