Bio

Albert J. Keung is a Chancellor’s Faculty Excellence Program cluster faculty member in Synthetic and Systems Biology. He is an associate professor in the Department of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering whose work spans the intersections of synthetic biology, chromatin biology and stem cell engineering. His group’s research broadly focuses on engineering the frontiers of how biological information is stored and accessed across diverse systems. Current project areas include engineering DNA-based information storage systems, organoid-based models to study neurodevelopmental and neurological disorders, and new molecular tools to control and sense dynamic changes in chromatin state.

Previously, Keung was an National Institutes of Health Postdoctoral Fellow at MIT and Boston University. He received his Ph.D. in chemical engineering from the University of California, Berkeley as a National Defense Science and Engineering Graduate and National Science Foundation Fellow, and earned his bachelor of science in chemical engineering from Stanford University.

Beyond the Genetic Code: Engineering the Epigenome to Control Cellular Information

The Keung Lab develops molecular technologies to read, write, and engineer epigenetic information, the layers of regulation beyond DNA sequence that control how genes are accessed and expressed. Drawing on approaches from engineering, biology, and physics, the group focuses on chromatin, the dynamic DNA–protein structure whose biochemical and three-dimensional organization governs development, disease, and cellular identity. By creating tools to precisely manipulate chromatin properties, this work reveals fundamental mechanisms of gene regulation and enables new forms of cellular control. Application areas include engineering human stem cell and cerebral organoid models of neurodevelopmental and substance-use disorders, constructing chromatin-based biological circuits for biotechnology, and developing DNA-based systems for ultra-dense information storage and computing. Together, this research positions epigenome engineering as a powerful platform for discovery, therapy, and next-generation bioengineering technologies.