Ting Lu is an associate professor of bioengineering at the University of Illinois. His lab focuses on the analysis, modeling, and construction of bacterial gene circuits for uncovering biological design principles and advancing biotechnological applications. For the RIPE project, Ting helped improve the efficiency of plant transformation, which is a key step for engineering crops with improved photosynthesis. Ting has a bachelor's degree in physics from Zhejiang University and went on to earn a doctorate in biophysics from the University of California at San Diego. His work has been published in peer-reviewed journals including Science, Science Advances, Nature Microbiology, Nature Chemical Biology, and many others.