Yuexuan (Vincent) Zu

Yuexua (Vincent) Zu is a PhD candidate in chemical engineering whose research is focused on engineering microorganisms for the renewable production of biofuels. Specifically, Vincent aims to engineer cells capable of converting renewable feedstocks into intracellular lipids with high titer, productivity, and yield. Supported by a MathWorks Fellowship, he will use MATLAB-based in silico metabolic models to explore a novel co-feeding approach, pairing glucose with the less-preferred substrates. This approach significantly increases biomass production and product yield; a deeper understanding of this phenomenon could shed light on the underlying metabolism of metabolic adaption. Vincent has created a metabolic model for the yeast Yarrowia lipolytica and identified a promising target gene that has been cloned into cells. He plans to develop a predictive model to guide the genetic design of strains for further performance improvement. In addition, Vincent has developed an automated data acquisition/processing pipeline to monitor real-time CO2 production in bioreactors. His work has strong potential to advance the development of renewable biofuels and to promote innovative applications of MathWorks tools within the field.