Congrats to the team led by my postdoc Yi for the development of a new-to-nature enzymatic hydrophosphorylation (science.org/doi/10.1126/scie…). See a related news release at cabbi.bio.

X: Thrilled to release a new preprint on the development of an AI-powered cloud biofoundry for autonomous biological research on bioRxiv (biorxiv.org/content/10.64898…). By integrating agentic AI with physical AI, iCloudBiofoundry provides a cloud accessible, self-evolving, and scalable platform that unifies computational design and robotic execution. Congrats to an outstanding group of students and postdocs from @HuiminZhaoLab and a couple of staff scientists from @NCSAatIllinois. Hope the iCloudBiofoundry platform will unleash a new era in scientific research just like what NCSA Mosaic transformed the Internet in 1993.

For undergrads, research can feel out of reach. That’s where the MATRIX-Uni program comes in. MATRIX fellow, Soohwan Kim, a @UofIllinois junior, worked alongside #NSFMMLI researchers to advance #AI models for #biotechnology. Watch his story: youtu.be/_7CYiOS-5K8 #STEM @NSF

news.illinois.edu/illinois-l… It is a true honor to receive this award. Looking forward to work with Hector from LBNL and Arvind from ANL to develop foundation models that will drastically accelerate the metabolic engineering effort for biomanufacturing.

chbe.illinois.edu/news/stori… Thrilled to read this news story. A wild idea in 2013 has turned into a new trend in the scientific community given the recent investments from NSF (Biofoundries program and PCL) and DOE (Genesis Mission).

Congrats to the team led by Jingxia for developing a new technology to recover rare-earth elements from low grade ore (nature.com/articles/s41467-0…). Also see news: news.illinois.edu/engineered…

I am glad that our recent work on photobiosynthesis was highlighted by Nature: Light-powered bacteria become living chemical factories nature.com/articles/d41586-0…

Congrats to the team led by Yujie and Maolin for successfully integrating new-to-nature photoenzymes into cellular metabolism, published in @NatureCatalysis (rdcu.be/e0pcM). This work lays the groundwork for ab initio biosynthesis design & programmable biomanufacturing.

Congrats to Harry, Teresa, Sarang and the rest of the team for developing a new bioprocess for cost-effective production of 3-HP, an industrial platform chemical. nature.com/articles/s41467-0….

Are you a US-based STEM college student seeking a summer research opportunity in AI+Chemistry? Join us at NSF-MMLI! Applications will close on February 17, 2026. To know more, go to go.illinois.edu/matrix-uni #summerresearch #AIchemistry #NSFfunded #chemistry #ArtificialInteligence

As a follow-up to our CLEAN tool, we developed EZSpecificity to predict enzyme substrate specificity from sequence (nature.com/articles/s41586-0…) in collaboration with @diwakarshukla and his team. See news: news.illinois.edu/new-ai-too…

We are very grateful to NSF’s generous support that will enable us to develop a cloud biofoundry and turn it to a national user facility: news.illinois.edu/illinois-c….

AccFG: Accurate Functional Group Extraction and Molecular Structure Comparison pubs.acs.org/doi/10.1021/acs… @xuanlllme @HuiminZhaoLab #JCIM Vol65 Issue16 #ChemicalInformation

I was very excited that our AI Institute for Molecule Synthesis (MMLI) got renewed for another 5 years. See: NSF announces $100 million investment in National Artificial Intelligence Research Institutes awards to secure American leadership in AI nsf.gov/news/nsf-announces-1…

Congrats to the team led by Zhengyi and Maolin for developing a new strategy for the photoenzymatic stereoablative enantioconvergence of γ-chiral oximes (nature.com/articles/s41929-0…). See news release: cabbi.bio/using-light-powere….

Congrats to Nilmani, Steve, Tianhao, Jingxia, Adrianna, and Ocean for developing an AI-powered autonomous protein engineering platform (nature.com/articles/s41467-0…). See news release: news.illinois.edu/self-drivi…).

Exited to learn that my NSF global center proposal was selected for funding (new.nsf.gov/news/nsf-interna…). With this grant, we will be able to collaborate with researchers from other countries to establish standards and metrics for biofoundries and democratize biofoundry.

I am very pleased that NSF is now investing in biofoundries after we established the first integrated biofoundry in the world more than 10 years ago (new.nsf.gov/news/nsf-invests…). Also see News from UIUC (news.illinois.edu/view/6367/…).

Engineered enzyme flirts with fluorine cen.acs.org/acs-news/acs-mee… via @cenmag

Congrats to the team led by Maolin who developed an exciting new-to-nature enzymatic process to selectively incorporate fluorine motifs into functional molecules (cabbi.bio/new-additive-proce…).