Lukas Farbiak, Ph.D.

Lukas Farbiak is currently an Assistant Professor in the Program for Genetic Drug Engineering at UT Southwestern Medical Center in the Department of Biomedical Engineering. He received a B.S. in neuroscience with honors from Baylor University in 2013 and subsequently completed a M.S. in medical science from UNT Health Science Center in 2014. Following this, he joined the lab of Dr. Daniel Siegwart at UT Southwestern Medical Center in 2016 and obtained a Ph.D. in biomedical engineering (2021). During his doctoral training, he developed and optimized non-viral carriers for CRISPR/Cas9 gene editing machinery, specifically focusing on the utilization of homology-directed repair to induce correction of DNA mutations in vivo. Shortly thereafter, he completed a postdoctoral fellowship (2023) in the Siegwart lab. His areas of expertise encompass the development of non-viral carriers for a variety of therapeutic genetic medicines, including mRNA, siRNA, and pDNA, and gene editing technologies such as CRISPR/Cas systems and base editors. Currently, his research is concentrated on the design and generation of novel genetic constructs and non-viral delivery vehicles for a broad range of therapeutic indications.