Faculty Profile

Kevin V. Solomon

Associate Professor

Education

Doctorate – 2012 Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Masters – 2008 Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Bachelors – 2006 McMaster University, Canada

About Kevin V. Solomon (h3)

Mircoorganisms are among the most innovative chemists, catalyzing powerful chemistries at ambient conditions with high specificity. With emerging techniques from systems and synthetic biology, my lab characterizes and harnesses these capabilities to address grand challenges in sustainability, human health, and food safety. We also create novel synthetic biology tools via protein and genetic engineering to accelerate development of these platforms for industry.

Current areas of interest include:

lignocellulosic bioenergy and sustainable small molecule production
biotemplated nanomaterial synthesis
whole cell biosensors
medical diagnostics and novel gene editing technologies

Select Publications

For a complete listing of publications, please view the Full CV.

C Hooker, KZ Lee, KV Solomon*, Leveraging the biotechnology potential of anaerobic fungi, Current Opinion in Biotechnology, 59, 103-110 (2019)
C Hooker, E Hillman, J Overton, A Ortiz-Velez, M Schacht, A Hunnicutt, N Mosier, KV Solomon*, Hydrolysis of untreated lignocellulosic feedstock is independent of S-lignin composition in newly classified anaerobic fungal isolate, Piromyces sp. UH3-1, Biotechnology for Biofuels, 11:293 (2018)
KV Solomon, JK Henske, SP Gilmore, A Lipzen, IV Grigoriev, D Thompson, MA O’Malley*. Catabolic repression in early-diverging anaerobic fungi is partially mediated by natural antisense transcripts, Fungal Genetics & Biology, 121:1-9 (2018)
JK Henske, SE Wilken, KV Solomon, CE Smallwood, V Shutthanandan, JE Evans, MK Theodorou, MA O’Malley, Metabolic characterization of anaerobic fungi provides a path forward for consolidated bioprocessing of crude lignocellulose, Biotechnology & Bioengineering, 115 (4): 874-884 (2018)
ET Hillman, LR Readnour, KV Solomon*, Exploiting the natural product potential of fungi with integrated -omics and synthetic biology approaches, Current Opinion in Systems Biology, 5: 50-56 (2017)
CH Haitjema, SP Gilmore, JK Henske, KV Solomon, R de Groot, A Kuo, S Mondo, AA Salamov, K LaButti, Z Zhao, J Chinquy, K Barry, HM Brewer, SO Purvine, AT Wright, B Boxma, T van Alen, JHP Hackstein, SE Baker, K Barry, IV Grigoriev, MA O’Malley*, A Parts List for Fungal Cellulosomes Revealed by Comparative Genomics, Nature Microbiology, 2:17087, (2017)
KV Solomon, E Ovadia, F Yu, W Mizunashi, MA O’Malley*. Mitochondrial targeting increases specific activity of a heterologous valine assimilation pathway in Saccharomyces cerevisiae, Metabolic Engineering Communications, 3:68-75, (2016)
KV Solomon, CH Haitjema, JK Henske, SP Gilmore, D Borges-Rivera, A Lipzen, HM Brewer, SO Purvine, AT Wright, MK Theodorou, IV Grigoriev, A Regev, DA Thompson, MA O’Malley*. Early-branching gut fungi possess a large, comprehensive array of biomass degrading enzymes, Science, 351 (6278): 1192 – 1195, (2016)
KV Solomon, TS Moon, B Ma, TM Sanders, KLJ Prather*, Tuning primary metabolism for heterologous productivity, ACS Synthetic Biology, 2(3):126-135, (2013)
KV Solomon, TM Sanders, KLJ Prather*. A dynamic metabolite valve for the control of central carbon metabolism, Metabolic Engineering, 14(6): 661-671, (2012)

Patents (h3)

Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit. Sed vel nisi tristique enim dictum feugiat rhoncus et nisl. Sed pharetra.

Awards

For a complete listing of awards, please view the Full CV.

NSF CAREER Award (2022)
US Department of Energy Early Career Award (2019)
Congressional testimony before the 116th US Congress (2019)
Teaching for Tomorrow Fellow, Purdue University (2019)
Most Outstanding Faculty, Purdue University Residences (2018)
Genewiz Empower New Faculty Award (2017)
Distinguished Young Scholar Seminar Series, UW-Seattle (2014)
Nucleic Acids Research Travel Award – Intl. Conf. on Biomolecular Eng., Ft. Lauderdale, FL (2013)
Invited Webinar, Best of BIOT, American Chemical Society (2011)
Genopole Travel Grant, International Conference on Synthetic Biology, Paris, France (2010)