Team
Current Members
Daniel Woldring, PhD
Principal Investigator
Daniel Woldring is an assistant professor in the chemical engineering and materials science department and a member of the Institute for Quantitative Health Sciences and Engineering at Michigan State University. His research expands on the fundamental understanding of protein-protein interactions as a means of exploring complex biological systems and develop novel, effective therapeutics.
Dr. Woldring completed his bachelor’s in chemical engineering at Michigan Technological University. Prior to graduate school, he worked in industry as a process engineer at Marathon Petroleum (Detroit, MI). Dr. Woldring completed his PhD in chemical engineering at the University of Minnesota. During this time, he gained expertise in protein engineering and pursued interdisciplinary projects which focused on protein stability and library design, molecular imaging of cancer biomarkers, high-throughput sequence analysis software, and exploring the behavior of metastatic tumors. Later, as a postdoctoral fellow for the Howard Hughes Medical Institute at Brandeis University, his work explored how ancestral enzymes can efficiently evolve under harsh conditions within continuous growth bioreactors.
Dr. Woldring is a native Michigander and is excited to have returned to the Great Lakes State. Outside of the lab, Dr. Woldring and his wife (Carolyn) enjoy raising their son (Harrison) and dog (Ada). In the winter months, you will find the Woldring family in the Jenison Field House cheering on the MSU Wrestling Team.
Email: woldring [at] egr.msu.edu
Sunanda Dey
Graduate Student
Sunanda has a BSE in chemical engineering from Maulana Abul Kalam Azad University of Technology (Kolkata, India). Her research uses protein engineering principles to design electrochemical biosensors which detect aggressive diseases.
Email: deysunan@msu.edu
Mehrsa Mardikoraem
Graduate Student
After completing her BSE in chemical engineering at Amirkabir University of Technology (Tehran, Iran), Mehrsa’s research leverages language prediction and deep learning for rationally-guided library design for the discovery of high performance therapeutic and diagnostic proteins.
Email: mardikor@msu.edu
Sam Schmidt
Graduate Student
Sam has BSE from UIUC in Materials Science and Engineering. His research focuses on utilizing high-throughput yeast display and selection for clinically-relevant, difficult antibody binders.
Email: schmi819@msu.edu
Benedikt Dolgikh
Graduate Student
Ben graduated from MSU with BS Genomics and Molecular Genetics in 2020. His research uses molecular modeling simulations and ancestral sequence reconstruction in tandem with high-throughput protein engineering to study molecular evolution.
Email: dolgikhb@msu.edu
Annie Needs
Graduate Student
Annie has a BSE in chemical engineering from Calvin University. Her research applies protein engineering and machine learning principles to study monoclonal antibody design.
Email: needsang@msu.edu
Sam Schulte
Undergraduate Researcher
Sam is pursuing a degree in chemical engineering. Her work uses protein engineering and computational modeling tools to modify the interactions of proteins. She is currently working on projects involving the HaloTag and FLS2 proteins.
Email: schul787@msu.edu
Maya Kerwin
Undergraduate Researcher
Maya is pursuing a degree in Chemical Engineering as a professorial assistant for Dr. Woldring. Her work focuses applying protein engineering principles and computational tools for engineering OATPs.
Email: kerwinm2@msu.edu
Nathaniel Pascual
Undergraduate Researcher
Nathaniel is a recent graduate of MSU’s ChEMS department (2022, BS ChE with a Concentration in Biochemical Engineering and a Minor in Bioethics). Building on his previous experiences as a member of MSU’s 2020 iGEM Team and the Harada Lab (MSU IQ), Nathaniel’s current research in the Woldring group focuses on developing high-throughput methods to characterize computationally-reconstructed ancestor OATP sequences.
Email: pascualn@msu.edu
Aryaman Joshi
Undergraduate Researcher
Aryaman is currently a final-year chemical engineering undergraduate at IIT-BHU, India. His research focuses on the development of Meta-Predictor: A framework for analyzing protein sequences. He loves to implement python and machine learning techniques for studying therapeutics.
Email: vanant25@msu.edu
Tessa Versace
Undergraduate Researcher
Tessa is a sophomore Chemical Engineering student. Her research focuses on mutating and analyzing HA proteins to provide data for machine learning algorithms.
Email: versacet@msu.edu
James VanAntwerp
Undergraduate Researcher
James is pursuing dual degrees in Chemical Engineering and Computer Science. His research within the Woldring Lab focuses on developing ancestral sequence reconstruction pipelines for protein engineering tasks.
Email: vanant25@msu.edu
Theodore Belecciu
Undergraduate Researcher
Theo is majoring in Chemical Engineering. He is working on docking simulations of various phytochemicals with SARS-CoV-2 proteins and assists with multiple computational projects and tasks.
Email: belecciu@msu.edu
Former Members
Navya Ramesh
Graduate Student
Navya has graduated with Bachelors of Engineering from PES University, India. Her research area aligns in Machine learning aspects of protein engineering in designing a high binding affinity protein library before finishing her Masters at MSU. Navya is currently working as a Machine Learning Engineer at Model Medicines San Diego.
Email: tippanan@msu.edu
Joelle Eaves
Laboratory Technician
Joelle graduated from MSU with BS Chemical Engineering in 2022. Joelle’s expertise in high-throughput protein engineering and computational tools is moving with the start of graduate school for Chemical Engineering at MSU in the Gilad Lab!
Zirui Wang
Laboratory Technician
Ray graduated from MSU with a Bachelor’s degree in chemical engineering in 2019. His research used computational protein-ligand docking, machine learning, and statistical clustering to explore phytochemical candidates against SARS-CoV-2. Ray will be starting his Master’s in Computational Science at Syracuse in Fall 2022.
Email: wangzir@msu.edu
Other Current and Former Members:
- Alaina Young, undergraduate student, younga59@msu.edu, former member
- Claudia Kramer, undergraduate student, kramercl@msu.edu, former member
- Yun (Caroline) Cheng, undergraduate student, chengy14@msu.edu, former member
- Ashley Maloney, undergraduate student, malon112@msu.edu
Ada the Dog
Lab Mascot
Ada’s natural habitat is any open field where she is allowed to run free and play fetch. She is easily distracted, but she’s great for lab morale.
WL 