Rate My Professor Susan Roberts

Susan Celia Roberts is an Affiliate Professor in the Department of Chemical Engineering at Worcester Polytechnic Institute (WPI), where she served as Professor and Head of the department from 2015. She earned her B.S. in Chemical Engineering with high distinction, concentrating in Biomedical Engineering, from WPI in 1992, and her Ph.D. in Chemical Engineering with a minor in Biochemistry from Cornell University in 1998. Her doctoral thesis focused on engineering metabolism in plant cell tissue cultures to optimize production of the anti-cancer agent Taxol.

Roberts specializes in biochemical engineering, with research centered on biomanufacturing, cellular engineering, and plant cell suspension cultures for synthesizing high-value natural products, particularly anti-cancer agents like paclitaxel from Taxus species. Her contributions include genetic engineering techniques to enhance paclitaxel production, insights into epigenetic regulation and pathway control via CRISPR-guided methylation, and models for shear stress effects on cell aggregation. Prior to WPI, she advanced at the University of Massachusetts Amherst from Assistant Professor (1998-2005) to Professor (2012-2015), directing the Institute for Cellular Engineering (2005-2015) and serving as Associate Dean of the Graduate School (2013-2015). Roberts has earned prestigious awards including the NSF CAREER Award (2000), UMass College of Engineering Outstanding Junior Faculty Award (2003), NSF ADVANCE Adaptation Grant (2018), and NIH Diversity Prize in Biomedical Sciences (2021). Key publications encompass book chapters such as “Bioprocess Engineering of Plant Cell Suspension Cultures” (2017, in Applied Bioengineering) and “Secondary Metabolite Production in Plant Cell Culture: A New Epigenetic Frontier” (2020, in Exploring Plant Culture), and peer-reviewed articles like “Targeted control of supporting pathways in paclitaxel biosynthesis with CRISPR-guided methylation” (2023, Frontiers in Bioengineering and Biotechnology), “The interface amongst conserved and specialized pathways in non-paclitaxel and paclitaxel accumulating Taxus cultures” (2021, Metabolites), and “A population balance model to modulate shear for the control of aggregation in Taxus suspension cultures” (2020, Biotechnology Progress). Her work has secured funding through WPI President's Research Catalyst Grants and advanced biomanufacturing sustainability initiatives.