Cornell Center for Antimicrobial Resistance Research & Education Fall Seminar Series 2025

Title: Targeted Fusion for Potential Therapy Applications: CFPS-Engineered Viral Fusogens and OmpF-Loaded Liposomes Elevate Outer-Membrane Porosity

Speaker Bio: Ekaterina (Kate) Selivanovitch, Ph.D., is an NIH F32 Postdoctoral Fellow in Cornell’s Robert F. Smith School of Chemical & Biomolecular Engineering. Trained as a chemist (Ph.D., Indiana University) working on protein cages and VLPs with Trevor Douglas, she now engineers virus-inspired lipid nanoparticles and cell-free (CFPS)-made proteoliposomes featuring influenza hemagglutinin (HA) to drive membrane fusion, and uses CFPS to express bacterial outer-membrane proteins (e.g., OmpF) directly into lipid bilayers to enhance Gram-negative permeability.