Angela Chen

About

Angela Chen joined the Chemical Engineering and Materials Science department in January 2025. The Chen lab is focused on developing new sustainable nanomaterials and biological strategies for regulating microbiomes that will combat and mitigate climate change by improving plant resiliency for food security and bioenergy, reducing agricultural chemical usage, and enabling bioremediation. We are extremely interested in plant-microbe and microbe-microbe communication and how nanotechnology and synthetic biology can be leveraged to control these interactions.

Education

• Postdoc, Microbiology and Plant Pathology, University of California, Riverside 2024
• Ph.D. Chemical Engineering, University of Texas at Austin, 2021
• M.S. Chemical Engineering, University of Texas at Austin, 2020
• B.S. Chemical Engineering, The Ohio State University, 2015
• B.S. Biomedical Engineering, The Ohio State University, 2015

Selected publications

• A. Chen, L. Halilovic, J-H. Shay, A. Koch, N. Mitter, and H. Jin. 2023. “Improving RNA-based crop protection through nanotechnology and insights from cross-kingdom RNA trafficking”. Current Opinion in Plant Biology 76:102441.
• B. He, H. Wang, G. Liu, A. Chen, A. Calvo, Q. Cai, and H. Jin. 2023. “Fungal small RNAs ride in extracellular vesicles to enter plant cells through clathrin-mediated endocytosis”. Nature Communications 14:4383.
• A. Chen, J. Hernandez-Vargas, R. Han, O. Cortazar-Martinez, N. Gonzalez, S. Patel, B.K. Keitz, G. Luna-Barcenas, and L.M. Contreras. 2021. “Small RNAs as a New Platform for Tuning the Biosynthesis of Silver Nanoparticles for Enhanced Material and Function
• A. Chen, L.M. Contreras, and B.K. Keitz. 2017. “Imposed Environmental Stresses Facilitate Cell-Free Nanoparticle Formation by Deinococcus radiodurans”. Applied Environmental Microbiology 83:1–14.