People

Wonsik’s research is on the enzymatic cleavage of carbon–fluorine bonds — PFAS defluorination. So far he has worked at the atomic scale, using molecular dynamics and free-energy analysis to understand how a substrate approaches and orients itself in an active site; everything above that scale is new to me — expressing, tuning, mutating, and designing these enzymes in a living host. At the Keasling Lab I’d like to extend my work from atoms to genes and cells, and to learn how computational design, automation, and machine learning come together in a design–build–test–learn cycle. I’m especially drawn to the lab’s work on engineering enzymes for reactions that don’t exist in nature — cleaving a C–F bond is exactly that kind of problem.