Sam Oliveira

About Professor Oliveira

CURRICULUM VITAE

PDF Version, August 2023

About Sam Oliveira

Sam is an Assistant Professor of Nanoengineering at the Joint School of Nanoscience and Nanoengineering (JSNN) from North Carolina A&T State University. He specializes in Bioengineering, Single-cell Live Microscopy, and Microfluidics.

The Oliveira lab (oliveiralab.me) investigates the emergence of the complexity of collective behaviors and communication of natural microbiomes to rationally engineer synthetic microbiomes and artificial microenvironments. The team applies computer, electrical engineering, microscopy, microfluidics, and synthetic biology breakthroughs to improve our knowledge of the links between genetic sequences, intercellular communication, and programmable spatiotemporal microbial behaviors, aiming at engineering “smart” microbial devices, such as wearables, that can interface with natural targets (sense, compute, and actuate) in real-life problems related to diseases in healthcare, agriculture, and the environment.

Sam is active in the SynBio community as a member of the Engineering Biology Research Consortium (EBRC) and the Synthetic Biology Brazil (SynBioBr), an iGEM team member, judge, and topic editor, and a member of Boston University’s STEM Pathways for high school and undergraduate outreach programs. Finally, Sam co-founded Doroth (doroth.com.br) and is a consultant and member of scientific advisory boards in the Raleigh-Durham area for bioengineering, microfluidics, and hardware automation.

Selected Publications

S.M.D. Oliveira and D. Densmore (2022) Hardware, Software, Wetware, Co-Design for Synthetic Biology. BioDesign Research. 2022(9794510), 15. DOI: 10.34133/2022/9794510

T.S. Jones, S.M.D. Oliveira, C.J. Myers, C.A. Voigt, and D. Densmore (2022) Genetic Circuit Design Automation with Cello 2.0. Nature Protocols. 17: 1097–1113. DOI: 10.1038/s41596-021-00675-2

S.M.D. Oliveira, N.S.M. Goncalves, L. Martins, R. Neeli-Venkata, J. Reyelt, J.M. Fonseca, J. Lloyd-Price, H. Kranz, and A.S. Ribeiro (2019) Chromosome and plasmid-borne pLacO3O1 promoters differ in sensitivity to critically low temperatures. Scientific Reports, 9:4486. DOI: 10.1038/s41598-019-39618-z

S.M.D. Oliveira, A. Häkkinen, J. Lloyd-Price, H. Tran, V. Kandavalli, and A.S. Ribeiro (2017) Temperature-Dependent Model of Multi-Step Transcription Initiation in Escherichia coli Based on Live Single-Cell Measurements. PLoS Computational Biology, 12(10): e1005174. DOI: 10.1371/journal.pcbi.1005174

S.M.D. Oliveira et al. (2016) Increased cytoplasm viscosity hampers aggregate polar segregation in Escherichia coli. Molecular Microbiology, 99(4):686-699. DOI: 10.1111/mmi.13257

S.M.D. Oliveira, J.G. Chandraseelan, A. Häkkinen, N.S.M. Goncalves, O. Yli-Harja, S. Startceva, and A.S. Ribeiro (2015) Single-cell kinetics of the Repressilator when inserted into a single-copy plasmid. Molecular Biosystems, 11:1939-1945. DOI: 10.1039/C5MB00012B

J. Mäkelä, M. Kandhavelu, S.M.D. Oliveira, J.G. Chandraseelan, J. Lloyd-Price, J. Peltonen, O. Yli-Harja, and A.S. Ribeiro (2013) In vivo single-molecule kinetics of activation and subsequent activity of the arabinose promoter. Nucleic Acids Research, 5:1-9. DOI: 10.1093/nar/gkt350

(complete list: https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=5PIo7w8AAAAJ&hl=en)

Honors & Awards

• NCAT Excellence in Research Award 2024 – Interdisciplinary Team. NCAT Award. Authors: Reza Zadegan, Salil Desai, Shyam Aravamudhan, and S.M.D. Oliveira. 2024, Greensboro, USA.
• National Science Foundation, Collaborative Research (#2211040), Technical Leader, $1,4M, Boston-Greensboro, USA (2023-2025).
• PIPE FASE-2 and PIPE-INVEST FAPESP Awards, Startup Doroth, $0,5M, Sao Paulo, Brazil (2019-2022).
• The 2^nd Best AgriTech Startup Award, AgriShow Summit, Startup Doroth, Ribeirao Preto, BrazilStartup
• Startup Acceleration Award, Open Innovation EMBRAStartup, Startup Doroth, Paraná, Brazil (2020).
• Best Ph.D. Thesis Award, Functionality of Genetic Circuits at Fluctuating Temperatures, Tampere University, Tampere, Finland (2020).

Classes Taught

NANO 706 – Systems and Computational Biology (Fall)

NANO 853 – Microfluidics and Biological Applications (Spring)

Research Interests

Bioengineering: Synthetic Microbial Communities, Spatial-temporal Dynamics, Synthetic Biofilms, Biocomputational, Biodevices, Probiotics; Microfluidics: Photolithography, Wearables, Artificial Microenvironments, Organ-on-a-chip; and Co-design Automation (Microbes and Environments).