Please join us in congratulating Assistant Professors Dan Knights and Kechun Zhang, who were among the eight recipients of the 2015-2017 McKnight Land-Grant Professorship. The award is designed to advance the careers of promising junior faculty members who demonstrate the potential to make significant contributions to their departments and disciplines.

Dan Knights (BTI/Computer Science & Engineering)
Trillions of bacteria live in our guts, protecting us from infection and aiding our digestion. An imbalance of these bacteria, called dysbiosis, may contribute to obesity, diabetes, cancer, Crohn’s, and many other diseases, yet each person’s bacterial diversity is so distinct that we cannot easily identify when a microbiome is “unhealthy.” In his research, Dan combines expertise in data mining and biology to advance detection and treatment of dysbiosis in obesity and autoimmune diseases.

Kechun Zhang (BTI/Chemical Engineering & Materials Science)
Transforming traditional chemical production into a green and sustainable future is a great challenge facing human society. The current biorefinery process utilizes food resources and is limited by the metabolic capability of natural microorganisms. To enhance the viability of biomanufacturing, Kechun is engineering a new metabolic pathway in industrial yeast for more efficient fermentation of value-added chemicals from lignocellulosic feedstocks such as corn stover, sugar beet pulp, and citrus peel.