John Cumbers, Ph.D Candidate Graduate Program in Molecular Biology, Cell Biology, and Biochemistry

John Cumbers has been working at NASA Ames since 2008 looking at the mechanisms of radiation resistance and cold tolerance in cyanobacteria from extreme environments. He is a PhD student in the Graduate Program in Molecular Biology, Cell Biology, and Biochemistry at Brown University, Providence, RI. USA. His studies include synthetic biology in extremophiles and his PhD is on the phylogenetics of the radiation resistant cyanobacteria Chroococcidiopsis. These organisms are found in a range of locations from the cold Dry Valleys of Antarctica to the hot dry Negev desert in Israel.

John is also interested in foundational synthetic biology and tools that make biology easier to engineer. At Brown, John founded the Brown iGEM (International Genetically Engineered Machines) competition team in 2006. In 2007 he designed and taught the undergraduate class "Synthetic Biological Systems" and first developed ideas to design organisms for biological in situ resource utilization in space. John was instrumental in starting the NASA Synthetic Biology Initiative in 2010 and he co-chaired the first workshop on the applications of synthetic biology to NASA's mission. John did his undergraduate in software engineering at the University of Hull and has an MSc in bioinformatics from the University of Edinburgh, both in the UK.