Garrett Roell

Garrett Roell

Computational Synthetic Biologist

About me

I'm an assistant professor at the University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa. My work is focused on metabolic regulation for efficient biofuel production from non-food crops. The goal is to connect genes and gene expression with fermentation outcomes. When relaxing, I enjoy playing and watching sports including football and pickleball.

Interests

  • Machine learning
  • Metabolic engineering
  • Front end web development

Education

  • graduation-cap

    PhD in Chemical Engineering, 2017-2022

    Washington University in St. Louis

  • graduation-cap

    BS in Biomedical Engineering, 2012-2016

    Tufts University

Projects

IMPACTDB is a crowd-sourced database that makes bioprocess results from academic papers more accessible. Additionally, the database is used to train machine learning tools that are available via user friendly inferences on the site.

ImpactDB's DNA logo

Flux Balance Analysis (FBA) can be used to determine the metabolic states of a cell. Typically this procedure is done using python or matlab locally. This website allows users to perform FBA in their browser by comunicating with a server running CobraPy.

fba.garrettroell.com screenshot

All Things Analysis is an analytics website that offers articles, rankings and actionable insights. I am a Co-Founder, and the Chief Technology Officer for the company. I worked on this project in collaboration with a UX Designer.

All Things Analysis Logo

Given your first name, last name, and Southwest confirmation number, this react site with a node backend uses Puppeteer, a headless browser, to determine the check time for your flights, and a cron job to automatically check you to your flights when the check in window opens.

southwest airlines logo

R. opacus  Genome Scale Model

I led a project to create a digital reconstruction of the R. opacus PD630 metabolic network. This bacteria has the potential to produce biofuels from the non-edible parts of plants. This model was used predict how genetic and environmetal changes would affect fermentation outcomes.

example genome scale model

This Next.js site allows users to see trends of players fantasy point scoring from 2018-2021. It uses Savitsky-Golay filtering to generate the trend lines.

nfl logo

R. opacus  13C-Metabolic Flux Analysis

13C-Metabolic Flux Analysis (13C-MFA) is a rigourous analysis of a cell's metabolism.
It uses experimental and computational methods to determine intracellular reaction rates that uses a heavy isotope of carbon as a tracer.

Phenol Structure

Smokey Cats are a collection of NFTs that I am giving out for free.
If you would like one, send me an email with your ethereum wallet address.

example smokey cat image

Syngas Machine Learning

github icon

Clostridium carboxidivorans is a bacteria that can carbon monoxide, carbon dioxide, and hydrogen gas into the biofuels ethanol and butanol. The goal of this project was to compare the preformance of six machine learning algorithmsability to predict product production rate using the current product concentrations as inputs.

example-plot

This website allows the user to simulate the casino game craps, and displays statistics about the user's current simulation. Most notably, it has a chart that shows what percentile the user's simulation is in. The chart uses the binomial distribution to display the likelihood of each number of wins for a given number of total turns. It demonstrates how the law of large numbers favors the casino.

one-red-die

This website runs a simulation of the casino game blackjack. It plays blackjack with perfect stategy, and counts cards using the Hi-Lo strategy. By default the site will place a 20 unit bet if the true count is greater than 1. I find that card counting usually is not too effective because count seems to only slightly tilt the odds in the player's favor.

A custom implementation of Conway's game of life. This 'game' is an example of cellular automata, and demostrates how complex systems can emerge from simple rules. I think it is an metaphor for how the universe works.

stable game of life formation

A custom implementation of Steven Wolfram's cellular automata. Rule 30, and cellular automata in general, potentially are the key to understanding how simple rules produce complex structures and behaviour in nature.

A Conus textile shell similar in appearance to Rule 30

A visualizer for the Mandelbrot set that allows up to 10^10 times zoom, and user selected colors. It uses vanillaJS to paint the HTML canvas based on math with imaginary numbers. I like the idea that never-ending factals are form of infinity.

A picture of the mandelbrot set

A crypto trading app that allows users to paper trade bitcoin. It uses websockets to display the recent trade prices of 4 cryptocurrencies.

The bitcoin logo

A implementation of a classic game that allows users can play with their own uploaded images, and has many levels of difficulty.

puzzle piece

An implementation of a classic arcade game. Try to beat my best score, 34.

Snake game image

This is a custom personal website for a friend who is a UX designer. It helped land her first job after graduating from a UI/UX bootcamp!

Demet Senturk line drawing

Publications

Alyssa M. Worland, Zhenlin Han, Jessica Maruwan, Yu Wang, Zhi-Yan Du, Yinjie J. Tang, Wei Wen Su*, Garrett W. Roell*

Metabolic Engineering Journal Cover

Zhengyang Xiao, Wenyu Li, Hannah Moon, Garrett W. Roell*, Yixin Chen*, and Yinjie J. Tang*

ACS Synthetic Biology Cover

Garrett W. Roell, Christina Schenk, Winston E. Anthony, Rhiannon R. Carr, Aditya Ponukumati, Joonhoon Kim, Elena Akhmatskaya, Marcus Foston, Gautam Dantas, Tae Seok Moon, Yinjie J. Tang, Hector García Martín

ACS Synthetic Biology Cover

Garrett W. Roell, Ashik Sathish, Ni Wan, Qianshun Cheng, Zhiyou Wen, Yinjie J. Tang, Forrest Sheng Bao

Biochemical Engineering Journal Cover

Garrett W. Roell, Rhiannon R. Carr, Tayte Campbell, Zeyu Shang, William R. Henson, Jeffrey J.Czajka, Hector García Martín, Fuzhong Zhang, Marcus Foston, Gautam Dantas, Tae Seok Moon, Yinjie J.Tang

Metabolic Engineering Journal Cover

Garrett W. Roell, Jian Zha, Rhiannon R. Carr, Mattheos A. Koffas, Stephen S. Fong, and Yinjie J. Tang

Microbial Cell Factory Journal Cover