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Welcome

We are a brand-new lab at the University of Pennsylvania, starting in July 2025, affiliated with the Department of Cancer Biology and the Center for Cellular Immunotherapies.

Our focus is developing high-throughput approaches to understand and engineer the genetic machinery of immune cells, with the ultimate goal of improving cellular immunotherapies for cancer and other diseases.

Scientific Approaches

We are excited to explore and engineer immune cell biology through:

Protein Engineering Designing and measuring new receptors, transcription factors, and other proteins to rewire cellular behavior
Functional Genomics Understanding cellular signaling networks and their regulation
Synthetic Biology Building and testing new genetic circuits and regulatory elements

Technology Development

A large part of our work is the development of new technologies for immune cell engineering. We are especially focused on the development of high throughput methods that allow us to design and measure many different genetic modifications in parallel.

Machine Learning Developing generative computational models to both predict the function of proteins and genetic circuits and design new ones
Barcoded Clonal Tracking High-throughput mapping of clonal heterogeneity and responses to designed genetic modifications
Genome Editing New systems for efficient, specific and accurate delivery of large genetic payloads to immune cells

People

Principal Investigator

Daniel B. Goodman, Ph.D.

Daniel B. Goodman, Ph.D.

Assistant Professor, Department of Cancer Biology
Investigator, Center for Cellular Immunotherapies
Investigator, Parker Institute for Cancer Immunotherapy
Dr. Goodman is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Cancer Biology and an Investigator at the Center for Cellular Immunotherapies and the Parker Institute for Cancer Immunotherapy at the University of Pennsylvania. He earned his Ph.D. in Medical Engineering and Physics from the HST Program at MIT, where he worked with George Church on high-throughput design and measurement of microbial genomes and genetic elements. He then joined UCSF as a Jane Coffin Childs Postdoctoral Fellow, where he trained in the laboratories of Kole Roybal and Alexander Marson, applying these high-throughput synthetic approaches to T cell engineering and CAR-T receptor design.

Join Us

We are actively recruiting creative and motivated scientists at all levels, including postdocs, graduate students, junior research specialists, and undergraduates. As a new lab, we are committed to building an interdisciplinary team that fosters a vibrant, open, and collaborative culture of research excellence.

We can recruit from all University of Pennsylvania graduate programs, including CAMB, Bioengineering, and GCB. If are passionate about the topics below, please send us your CV with a cover letter here!

Research Focus

  • Working at the intersection of synthetic biology, systems biology, computational biology, and immunology
  • Engineering immune cells for therapeutic applications
  • Building machine learning models to design new proteins and DNA regulatory elements to control immune cells
  • Understanding development, clonal dynamics, and signal transduction in immune cells
  • Developing new high-throughput measurement and genome-editing technologies for immune cells

Mentorship and Career Development

The Goodman Lab is committed to fostering career development in a supportive research environment. Dr. Goodman’s prior trainees have gone on to succeed in PhD and MD programs, join and found biotechnology startups, and pursue academic careers. Our lab culture is built on shared scientific curiosity, a mission to advance medicine through immunology, and building an environment where team members support one another while pursuing scientific excellence in a dynamic and welcoming research community.

Come Join us!(mailto:recruitment@goodman-lab.org)

Publications

Selected Publications

2025

SEED-Selection enables high-efficiency enrichment of primary T cells edited at multiple loci
Chang CR, Vykunta VS, Lee JHJ, Li K, Kochendoerfer C, Muldoon JJ, Wang CH, Mazumder T, Sun Y, Goodman DB, Nyberg WA, Liu C, Allain V, Rothrock A, Ye CJ, Marson A, Shy BR, Eyquem J. Nat. Biotechnol. (): 1–11 (2025)

2024

Naturally occurring T cell mutations enhance engineered T cell therapies
Garcia J*, Daniels J*, Lee Y, Zhu I, Cheng K, Liu Q, Goodman D, Burnett C, Law C, Thienpont C, Alavi J, Azimi C, Montgomery G, Roybal KT, Choi J. Nature 626(7999): 626–634 (2024)

2023

Modular pooled discovery of synthetic knockin sequences to program durable cell therapies
Blaeschke F, Chen YY, Apathy R, Daniel B, Chen AY, Chen PA, Sandor K, Zhang W, Li Z, Mowery CT, Yamamoto TN, Nyberg WA, To A, Yu R, Bueno R, Kim MC, Schmidt R, Goodman DB, Feuchtinger T, Eyquem J, Jimmie Ye C, Carnevale J, Satpathy AT, Shifrut E, Roth TL, Marson A. Cell 186(19): 4216–4234.e33 (2023)

2022

Pooled screening of CAR T cells identifies diverse immune signaling domains for next-generation immunotherapies
Goodman DB*, Azimi C*, Kearns K, Talbot A, Garakani K, Garcia JM, Patel N, Hwang B, Lee DS, Park E, Vykunta VS, Shy B, Ye CJ, Eyquem J, Marson A, Bluestone J, Roybal KT. Sci. Transl. Med. 14(): eabm1463–eabm1463 (2022)

2021

High-throughput functional variant screens via in vivo production of single-stranded DNA
Schubert MG*, Goodman DB*, Wannier TM, Kaur D, Farzadfard F, Lu TK, Shipman SL, Church GM. Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U. S. A. 118(18): (2021)

2020

Polymer-stabilized Cas9 nanoparticles and modified repair templates increase genome editing efficiency
Nguyen DN, Roth TL, Li PJ, Chen PA, Apathy R, Mamedov MR, Vo LT, Tobin VR, Goodman D, Shifrut E, Bluestone JA, Puck JM, Szoka FC, Marson A. Nat. Biotechnol. 38(1): 44–49 (2020)

2018

Enabling multiplexed testing of pooled donor cells through whole-genome sequencing
Chan Y, Chan YK, Goodman DB, Guo X, Chavez A, Lim ET, Church GM. Genome Med. 10(1): 31 (2018)

2017

Optimizing complex phenotypes through model-guided multiplex genome engineering
Kuznetsov G*, Goodman DB*, Filsinger GT, Landon M, Rohland N, Aach J, Lajoie MJ, Church GM. Genome Biol. 18(1): 100 (2017)
Millstone: software for multiplex microbial genome analysis and engineering
Goodman DB*, Kuznetsov G*, Lajoie MJ, Ahern BW, Napolitano MG, Chen KY, Chen C, Church GM. Genome Biol. 18(1): 101 (2017)

2013

Genomically recoded organisms expand biological functions
Lajoie MJ*, Rovner AJ*, Goodman DB, Aerni H, Haimovich AD, Kuznetsov G, Mercer JA, Wang HH, Carr PA, Mosberg JA, Rohland N, Schultz PG, Jacobson JM, Rinehart J, Church GM, Isaacs FJ. Science 342(6156): 357–360 (2013)
Composability of regulatory sequences controlling transcription and translation in Escherichia coli
Kosuri S*, Goodman DB*, Cambray G, Mutalik VK, Gao Y, Arkin AP, Endy D, Church GM. Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U. S. A. 110(34): 14024–14029 (2013)
Causes and effects of N-terminal codon bias in bacterial genes
Goodman DB, Church GM, Kosuri S. Science 342(6157): 475–479 (2013)

All Publications

Patents