Carlotta Ronda, Ph.D.

Carlotta Ronda is a postdoctoral researcher in the Department of Systems Biology at Columbia University in Harris Wang’s lab. She obtained a master’s in medical biotechnology at Danmarks Tekniske Universitet, completing her thesis on antibiotic resistance with Professor Søren Molin. She received her Ph.D. in genetic and metabolic engineering from the Danmarks Tekniske Universitet, where she worked with Professor Alex Toftgaard Nielsen on designing new genetic-engineering tools to accelerate the development of biosustainable cell factories.

Ronda’s research interests center on developing new genome-engineering tools for modifying human-associated microbiota, such as the gut microbiome. Her approach relies on applying synthetic and systems biology to design and build new capabilities to genetically program non-model microbes, leveraging both engineering and evolutionary principles. Specifically, she seeks to develop methods to modify gut microbes that are otherwise genetically intractable or difficult to culture, using a variety of functional genomic and high-throughput strategies in both ex vivo and in situ mouse models.