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Ophelia Shalini Venturelli

Associate Professor in the Department of Biomedical Engineering
Biomedical Engineering

Research Interests


Systems biology, synthetic biology, computational modeling, microbiomes, host-microbiome interactions, microbial metabolism

Selected Grants


A multi-scale systems biology framework for understanding and engineering the human gut microbiome

ResearchPrincipal Investigator · Awarded by National Institute of General Medical Sciences · 2017 - 2030

Dietary Fiber-Microbiome Interactions: Elucidating Mechanisms to Suppress Multi-Drug Resistant Organisms in the Human Gut

ResearchPrincipal Investigator · Awarded by National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases · 2025 - 2029

NSF Engineering Research Center for Precision Microbiome Engineering (PreMiEr)

ResearchInvestigator · Awarded by National Science Foundation · 2022 - 2027

Duke Training Grant in Digestive Diseases and Nutrition

Inst. Training Prgm or CMEPreceptor · Awarded by National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases · 1988 - 2027

Investigating energy efficiency, information processing and control architectures of microbial community interaction networks

ResearchPrincipal Investigator · Awarded by University of Southern California · 2024 - 2026

Accelerating microbial community metabolism with physics-integrated active machine learning

ResearchPrincipal Investigator · Awarded by Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency · 2025 - 2026

A Systems Understanding of Nitrogen-fixation on the Aerial Roots of Sorghum

ResearchPrincipal Investigator · Awarded by University of Wisconsin - Madison · 2024 - 2025

Integrating physics and machine learning to design stable microbial communities

ResearchPrincipal Investigator · Awarded by Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency · 2024 - 2025

External Relationships


  • University of Wisconsin, Madison

This faculty member (or a member of their immediate family) has reported outside activities with the companies, institutions, or organizations listed above. This information is available to institutional leadership and, when appropriate, management plans are in place to address potential conflicts of interest.