Event
BIOE Seminar: Symbiosis: A Scientific Through Line from Academia, High Impact Research and Launching
Friday, September 4, 2026
9:00 a.m.-10:00 a.m.
A. James Clark Hall, Room #2121
Sara Molinari
saramol@umd.edu
John Sittmann
Co-founder & CEO
Deep Root Biolabs
Symbiosis: A Scientific Through Line from Academia, High Impact Research and Launching
Abstract
Life rarely works alone. This principle, initially drawn from an errant observation while studying at the University of Maryland, became the through line of my entire scientific career. Studying alga-bacteria symbiosis led to work at the Carnegie Institution's Department of Embryology, where the study of symbiosis took its most striking forms: the partnerships that build coral reefs and sustain organisms like Hydra. Across these systems ran a common thread, two partners achieving together what neither could accomplish alone.
This perspective proved unusually valuable at the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory, an environment where innovation and cross-disciplinary collaboration turned fundamental biology into applied capability. There, the idea of harnessing plant-microbe partnerships for real-world problems took shape and ultimately became Deep Root Biolabs. This talk traces how a career built on studying organisms that cooperate led directly to a company founded on the same idea: engineering symbiosis to recover critical minerals and restore degraded land.
Bio
John Sittmann earned both his bachelor's degree and his Ph.D. from the University of Maryland, where he trained in the laboratory of Dr. Zhongchi Liu studying the mechanisms of asexual reproduction in strawberries and diatom-alga symbiosis. He continued at the Carnegie Institution's Department of Embryology, investigating how endosymbiotic organisms such as Xenia umbellata and Hydra viridissima develop and maintain their endosymbionts. He went on to a postdoctoral appointment at the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory, where he conducted high-impact applied research across environmental systems for the applied sciences. He is now the co-founder and CEO of Deep Root Biolabs, a synthetic biology company engineering plant-microbe partnerships to recover critical minerals and restore degraded land.
