Research Bio
Adam Arkin is the Dean A. Richard Newton Memorial Professor of Bioengineering at the University of California, Berkeley and a Senior Faculty Scientist at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. He is a leader in systems and synthetic biology and biological data science, developing experimental, computational, and AI-enabled approaches to make biology predictive, interpretable, and engineerable. His research integrates mechanistic models, large-scale biological data, and machine learning to understand and design the behavior of microbes, viruses, and complex biological networks across environmental and biomedical settings.
Arkin has played a central role in building community-scale infrastructure for predictive biology, including directing ENIGMA, which advances molecular-level understanding of microbial ecosystems, and founding and leading the DOE Systems Biology Knowledgebase (KBase), an open, global platform that integrates data, models, and workflows to accelerate biological discovery and engineering. His current research initiatives include PROTECT, which develops engineered microbiome engineering-based strategies to prevent and respond to infectious disease, and collaborative leadership in the Phage Foundry, advancing scalable, data-driven phage design for treating antibiotic resistant infection and editing natural communities.
Across these efforts, Arkin’s work bridges fundamental biological insight and real-world deployment, enabling new approaches to environmental sustainability, bioenergy, infectious disease, and bio-enabled manufacturing. His research emphasizes not only what biological systems do, but why they behave as they do—creating trustworthy, mechanistically grounded models that support translation, policy, and engineering at scale.
Research Expertise and Interest
Systems and Synthetic Biology, Environmental Microbiology of Bacteria and Viruses, Biomanufacturing, Biomedicine, Bioremediation, space, green and sustainable manufacturing, infectious disease, Biological Data Science
In the News
Using the Microbiome To Combat Lung Pathogens
Solar Beats Nuclear at Many Potential Settlement Sites on Mars
Berkeley Lab’s Adam Arkin Wins 2013 Lawrence Award
Arkin has been named one of six recipients of the 2013 Ernest Orlando Lawrence Award by U.S. Energy Secretary Ernest Moniz. The E.O. Lawrence Award, the DOE’s highest scientific honor, is recognizing Arkin “for his work advancing biological and environmental sciences."
A Welcome Predictability
Synthetic biology is the latest and most advanced phase of genetic engineering, holding great promise for helping to solve some of the world’s most intractable problems, including the sustainable production of energy fuels and critical medical drugs, and the safe removal of toxic and radioactive waste from the environment.
Agilent helps launch new synthetic biology center
Agilent Technologies Inc. has signed up to support the newly launched Synthetic Biology Institute (SBI), which will help advance efforts to engineer cells and biological systems in ways that could transform health and medicine, energy, the environment and new materials.
NSF grant to launch world's first open-source genetic parts production facility
Bioengineers from the UC Berkeley and Stanford University are ramping up efforts to characterize the thousands of control elements critical to the engineering of microbes so that eventually, researchers can mix and match these "DNA parts" in synthetic organisms to produce new drugs, fuels or chemicals.
Featured in the Media
Bioengineering Professor Adam Arkin and his colleagues have "engineered the cyanobacterium Arthrospira platensis, commonly known as spirulina, to synthesize the painkiller paracetamol (acetaminophen)."