Scientists, engineers, and builders
Chassiscell was founded by three scientists whose complementary backgrounds — microbial metabolic engineering, computational synthetic biology, and analytical biochemistry — cover the full Design-Build-Characterize cycle. We are based at Boston University's Albany Street medical innovation corridor.
Rebecca Hartmann
CEO & Co-Founder
Eight years of microbial metabolic engineering, most recently at a Boston-based biotech focused on polyketide biosynthesis — where she spent several years optimizing E. coli chassis backgrounds for PKS pathway expression. The recurring observation that upstream host engineering consumed more program time than downstream pathway refinement led directly to founding Chassiscell. Rebecca leads partner program strategy, technical scoping, and company operations.
Marcus Tran
Co-Founder & Head of Chassis Engineering
Computational and experimental synthetic biologist with doctoral training in genome-scale metabolic modeling and modular genetic part library design. Marcus built and refined the constraint-based flux analysis workflow Chassiscell uses during chassis design — translating published genome-scale reconstructions into deletion target lists and copy number recommendations specific to each partner's compound class. He leads all Design-Build cycles and CRISPR/Cas9 genome editing at the lab.
Sofia Bellini
Co-Founder & Head of Characterization
Analytical biochemist with a career built around high-throughput phenotyping and 13C-MFA-based metabolic flux analysis. Sofia designed the structured characterization package format that accompanies every Chassiscell delivery — growth kinetics (batch and fed-batch), plasmid retention assays, proteomics snapshot, and condition-matched flux data. She established the pipeline from scratch in the lab's first operational month and runs all characterization programs.
Dr. Alan Keough
Scientific Advisor
Academic synthetic biologist with over two decades in microbial chassis development and strain engineering, with extensive work on genome reduction strategies and host-pathway compatibility in both E. coli and B. subtilis backgrounds. Dr. Keough advises Chassiscell on platform design decisions, characterization methodology, and long-term scientific strategy. His perspective, formed by watching many synthetic biology programs encounter the same chassis obstacles across different compound classes, was instrumental in shaping Chassiscell's design-first approach.
We're not hiring broadly yet
Chassiscell is a small founding team. We occasionally bring in collaborators for specific technical programs. If you're a synthetic biologist interested in chassis engineering and want to explore a conversation, reach us at [email protected].