Benjamin Woolston

Benjamin Woolston is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Chemical Engineering at Northeastern University, with an affiliation in Bioengineering. He joined the university in January 2020. His research focuses on metabolic engineering and synthetic biology for sustainable biochemical production and human health, leveraging acetogenic microbes and gut microbiota. He holds a PhD from MIT (2017) and a BSc from Penn State (2011).

Research Interests:

• Sustainable Biochemical Production: Engineering acetogens like Eubacterium limosum to utilize single-carbon substrates (e.g., CO, methanol) for biofuel/chemicals.
• Gut Microbiome Modulation: Developing engineered probiotics to control disease-associated metabolites in gut-on-chip models.
• Genetic Tools: Creating recombinant systems (e.g., CRISPRi, Cas9 counterselection) for anaerobic microbes.

Key Awards:

• 2025 NSF CAREER Award ($575K) for metabolic engineering of acetogens.
• 2025 ONR Young Investigator Award for methanol fermentation engineering.
• 2024 Søren Buus Outstanding Research Award.

Grants & Roles:

• PI: NSF-funded metabolic ‘doping’ project (2025).
• Co-PI: ARPA-E ECOSynBio project for zero-carbon biofuels (2021).
• PI: NIH NIBIB grant for engineered probiotics in gut models (2022).

Labs & Teams: The Woolston Lab at Northeastern explores microbial systems for sustainability and human health, emphasizing synthetic ecology and anaerobic bioprocessing. Collaborations include Tulane University and Boston University.