Nathan Crook

Nathan Crook is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering at North Carolina State University. He leads the Crook Lab, which focuses on developing high-throughput experimental and computational techniques for genetic engineering, with applications in metabolic engineering, synthetic biology, and microbial ecology. His research particularly emphasizes engineering gut microbiota to improve health outcomes through foundational technologies for designing microbial ecosystems.

Education: Ph.D. in Chemical Engineering from The University of Texas at Austin (2014), B.S. in Chemical Engineering from California Institute of Technology (2009).

Research Interests
His work integrates synthetic biology with systems engineering to address challenges in human health and environmental sustainability. Key areas include:

• Engineering probiotic organisms for in situ biomanufacturing
• Metabolic pathway optimization using directed evolution
• Understanding microbial community dynamics in the gut
• Development of novel enzyme systems for industrial applications

Awards

• NIH New Innovator Award (2024)
• NSF Early Career Development Award (2023)
• Ruth L. Kirschstein NRSA T32 (2015)
• National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship (2010)

Advising & Grants
Crook has secured major grants including NSF CAREER funding and NIH support. His lab actively collaborates with industry partners on projects involving probiotic engineering and bioremediation technologies. Students and postdocs in his lab focus on interdisciplinary challenges at the interface of chemical engineering and microbiology.

Labs/Teams
The Crook Lab is housed in Partners II Building at NC State. Research activities span wet-lab experimentation, computational modeling, and high-throughput screening, with a focus on translating fundamental discoveries into applied solutions.