Dr. Kai Chen will join the Department of Chemistry at the University of Pennsylvania as an Assistant Professor in January 2026. His research integrates chemical biology, protein engineering, and genome editing to develop molecular tools and delivery platforms for understanding biological systems and advancing therapeutic applications. As a postdoctoral researcher in Jennifer Doudna’s lab at UC Berkeley, he engineered CRISPR-Cas systems and lipid nanoparticle (LNP) vehicles to enable precise, tissue-specific genome editing in vivo. During his Ph.D.

Joining Penn in Spring 2025.

César de la Fuente is a Presidential Assistant Professor at the University of Pennsylvania, where he leads the Machine Biology Group. Previously, he pursued postdoctoral research at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and earned a PhD at the University of British Columbia (UBC). His research goal is to use the power of machines to accelerate discoveries in biology and medicine.

Dirk Trauner was born and raised in Linz, Austria, studied biology and chemistry at the University of Vienna, and received his undergraduate degree in chemistry from the Free University, Berlin. He then pursued graduate studies in chemistry under the direction of Prof. Johann Mulzer, with whom he moved to the University of Frankfurt and then back to Vienna where he obtained his Ph.D.

pronouns: she/her/hers