Career Center

Cochran Lab: Engineering Biocatalysts for Plastics RecyclingWe are in the midst of a plastic pollution crisis. Over 360 million tons of plastic waste are generated annually, of which more than 90% goes unrecycled, and an overwhelming 200 million tons accumulate in the environment as pollutants. In the Cochran lab, we are applying our decades-long expertise in protein engineering towards this global problem and are developing a novel screening platform to rapidly identify enzyme mutants with enhanced plastic-degrading activity. Plastic recycling is difficult today because consumer products contain plastic mixed in with many other types