Dr. Rajib Saha is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Chemical & Bimolecular Engineering at UNL. Prior to his appointment at UNL, he worked as a post-doctoral research associate in the Himadri Pakrasi Lab in Biology department at Washington University in St. Louis. He graduated with his PhD and MS in Chemical Engineering from the Costas Maranas Lab at The Pennsylvania State University in 2014 and 2011, respectively. He obtained his Bachelor in Chemical Engineering from Bangladesh University of Engineering and Technology with the top position in his graduating class.

Throughout his multidisciplinary graduate research career, he has developed metabolic network models for photosynthetic organisms and subsequently utilized those for studying their physiology and also for metabolic engineering applications. His recent postdoctoral research includes study of light/dark behavior and development of efficient and tunable gene expression control system of a model cyanobacterial strain. His research interests include reconstruction and analysis of genome-scale and community models, systems-level analysis of ‘omics’ data, development of genetic toolkit and engineering metabolic pathways, and redesign photosynthetic apparatus and carbon fixing mechanism.

His lab, the Systems and Synthetic Biology Laboratory (SSBio) conducts research aimed at discovey and redesign of non-model microbes, plants and microbial consortia. We focus on both computational and experimental techniques to overcome the challenges in utilizing these organisms as platforms for producing bio-renewables or answering biological questions regarding metabolism, health and environment.