Steven James Burgess

Dr. Steven James Burgess is an Assistant Professor at the Department of Plant Biology, part of the College of Liberal Arts & Sciences at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. He also holds affiliations with the Carl R. Woese Institute for Genomic Biology and the Center for Digital Agriculture at the National Center for Supercomputing Applications (NCSA).

• B.Sc. (Hons), University of Edinburgh
• Ph.D., Imperial College London
• Postdoctoral Research, University of Cambridge
• Research Fellow, Institute for Genomic Biology

Dr. Burgess leads the AgSynBio Lab, focusing on sustainable ecosystems through synthetic biology tools. His interdisciplinary approach combines synthetic biology, machine learning, protein engineering, and gene editing to improve photosynthetic organisms and crop performance. Key projects include developing Ostreococcus tauri as a model organism for photosynthetic research and creating platforms for directed evolution of photosynthesis enzymes.

His lab emphasizes open science practices, reproducibility, and collaborative research. While no specific scientific awards are mentioned in the text, his work on photosynthesis optimization and synthetic biology applications in agriculture is highlighted through current research initiatives and publications.