UF Ph.D. student trains Air Force cadets in synthetic biology for spaceflight research
Hannah Roberts, a Ph.D. student conducting research in the University of Florida’s Herbert Wertheim College of Engineering, recently represented UF in a prestigious collaboration with the U.S. Air Force Academy and Space Force, where she trained cadets in synthetic biology techniques for spaceflight experiments.
As the only UF student selected for the project, Roberts traveled to the Air Force Academy in Colorado to support cadets in designing, launching, and analyzing biological experiments aboard zero-gravity parabolic flights. The work is part of a larger mission funded by the Air Force Office of Scientific Research. It also included academic partners at Washington University in St. Louis.
Roberts works under Amor Menezes, Ph.D., in UF’s SYstems/SYnthetic Biological Optimization, Regulation, or Generation Systems Laboratory, which engineers living cells for space and medical applications.
“This was such an exciting opportunity,” said Roberts, who is also president of the Astraeus Space Institute’s student organization at UF and a student in the College of Medicine. “I was the only UF student out there, helping teach cadets how to run spaceflight experiments using synthetic biology. It was hands-on and very collaborative. I feel incredibly lucky to represent UF in this way.”
In addition to assisting with experiment design and flight operations, Roberts is now back in Gainesville analyzing samples and collecting data.
The goal of the experiment was to provide further insight into the “make it don’t take it” approach of using engineered microorganisms to produce useful compounds in space — known as biomanufacturing — rather than bringing all resources from Earth. For this experiment, Roberts and the cadets captured the genetic response of live, engineered and non-engineered cell cultures to real-time changes in gravity level aboard the parabolic flights.
The data will allow the research team to understand how microbes notice and respond to various gravity levels, and how that affects the ability of these microbes to produce various resources. In this case, the engineered microbes produced a precursor to vitamin A, which could be beneficial for supporting vision health in space.
“All the samples are back in our lab, and we’re processing them so we can learn from them,” Roberts said. “It’s great because we can compare these results with our previous missions to the International Space Station, where we studied the long-duration effects of low gravity on these engineered microbes. It’s all connected and helps us move the science forward.”
The research project reflects UF’s rising national profile in aerospace and biological science collaboration, especially in real-world space contexts.
“This isn’t just research — it’s training the next generation of scientists and engineers for space,” Roberts said. “And I get to be a part of that, as a student and as a Gator. That’s pretty amazing.”