Sarah J. Weintraub

I'm developing programmable DNA nanoparticles for precision applications in molecular biology, synthetic biology, and therapeutic delivery. By combining automated cloning, custom scaffold generation, and DNA origami design, my work explores how DNA nanostructures can be rationally engineered, mass-produced, and validated for functions ranging from targeted cargo delivery to in vivo gene regulation. I integrate computational tools with lab automation to streamline the design-build-test cycle for complex DNA-based devices.

Current Projects

  1. Custom Scaffold Cloning & ssDNA Production
    • Cloning and novel production of long single-stranded DNA scaffolds for origami assembly.
  2. Lab Automation and High-Throughput Assembly
    • Integrating robotic liquid handling for scaling production of DNA nanoparticles.

Previous Experience

Doctor of Philosophy, Bioinformatics and Computational Biology, Worcester Polytechnic Institute, May 2025

Bachelor of Science, Microbiology and Cell Science, University of Florida, Minor: Bioinformatics, May 2019

Publications

  • Weintraub, S. J., Li, Z., Nakagawa, C. L., Collins, J. H., & Young, E. M. (2024). Oleaginous yeast biology elucidated with comparative transcriptomics. Biotechnology and Bioengineering. https://doi.org/10.1002/bit.28891

  • Peng, B., Weintraub, S. J., ... & Vickers, C. E. (2023). Integration of yeast episomal/integrative plasmid causes genotypic and phenotypic diversity and improved sesquiterpene production in metabolically engineered Saccharomyces cerevisiae. ACS Synthetic Biology, 13(1), 141–156.

  • Collins, J. H., Kunyeit, L., Weintraub, S., Sharma, N., White, C., Haq, N., Anu-Appaiah, K. A., Rao, R. P., & Young, E. M. (2023). Genetic basis for probiotic yeast phenotypes revealed by nanopore sequencing. G3: Genes | Genomes | Genetics. https://doi.org/10.1093/g3journal/jkad093

  • Dobrindt, K., Zhang, H., Das, D., Abdollahi, S., Prorok, T., Ghosh, S., Weintraub, S., Genovese, G., Powell, S. K., Lund, A., & Akbarian, S. (2020). Publicly available hiPSC lines with extreme polygenic risk scores for modeling schizophrenia. Complex Psychiatry, 6(3–4), 68–82.

Contact Information

  • Please contact me by email: sweintraub@cmu.edu

My github

Personal website