Photo of Dr. Xiaojing Gao, Assistant Professor of Chemical Engineering at Stanford University.
Bio-X Affiliated Faculty

Dr. Xiaojing Gao hopes to provide answers to the question of how to design biological systems as “smart medicine” that sense patients’ states, process the information, and respond accordingly. To realize this vision, Dr. Gao's lab will tackle fundamental challenges across different levels of complexity, such as (1) protein components that minimize their crosstalk with human cells and immunogenicity, (2) biomolecular circuits that function robustly in different cells and are easy to deliver, (3) multicellular consortia that communicate through scalable channels, and (4) therapeutic modules that interface with physiological inputs/outputs. Their engineering targets include biomolecules, molecular circuits, viruses, and cells, and our approach combines quantitative experimental analysis with computational simulation. The molecular tools built by the Gao lab will be applied to diverse fields such as neurobiology and cancer therapy.