Ophelia Venturelli

Ophelia Venturelli is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Biomedical Engineering at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, with additional affiliations in Chemical and Biological Engineering. Her research integrates experimental, computational, and theoretical approaches to understand biological network behaviors across scales.

Her primary research interests include extracting evolutionary design principles of synthetic ecologies and microbial networks. The Venturelli Lab investigates ecological, molecular, and genetic determinants of community dynamics and spatial organization, developing interventions to steer microbiomes toward desired metabolic states using synthetic biology and control theory.

The lab employs microfluidics for high-throughput studies and natural microenvironment replication, combining multiplexed single-cell/population measurements with nonlinear dynamical systems analysis and machine learning to engineer predictable microbial control systems for biomedical applications.