May 30, 2017
“Most of what we do that resonates with the public is to get weird, unexpected microbes out of the environment.” The speaker is Michelle O’Malley, assistant professor in the Department of Chemical Engineering at the UCSB College of Engineering, and the environment she’s talking about is, often, the gut of a large herbivore, such as a cow, a horse, or a zoo animal. That’s where she and her research colleagues have discovered organisms that can be engineered to serve human needs.