Quentin Dudley joined the Department of Chemical and Biological Engineering as an assistant professor in January 2024. He completed his PhD at Northwestern University, developing a new approach for prototyping enzyme pathways using cell-free protein synthesis. Afterward, he spent four years as a postdoctoral researcher at the Earlham Institute and John Innes Centre in Norwich, United Kingdom where he improved tools for engineering plants to produce valuable bioactive molecules such as strictosidine, a precursor to anticancer compounds. Before joining UW-Madison, he led the analytical chemistry team at the plant synthetic biology company Calyxt and was a field strategist for Speculative Technologies, a non-profit research organization.
The Dudley lab will be researching sustainable production of useful biomolecules with a particular focus on cell-free and plant synthetic biology.