Stanford Bioengineering PhD Student Named Top 30 Young Scientists for Climate Research

The 2025 Inflection Award recognizes early-career scientists developing solutions for climate change. Selected as one of 30 recipients from a pool of 500+ applicants worldwide, Bella Archibald was honored for her research in the Brophy Lab, where she works on developing new tools for precisely engineering plants and plant root structures to create plants that are more drought-tolerant and climate-resilient. "This well-deserved recognition highlights Bella's dedication to solving climate challenges, and I couldn't be prouder to see her work celebrated on a global stage!" said her advisor, Professor Jenn Brophy.

Early Inspiration

"The first time I remember learning about climate change was in my fifth-grade class. My teacher found out my favorite animal was a polar bear, and he told me that the polar bears were all going to die because the ice caps were melting. I felt devastated, scared, and angry, but also a sense of responsibility," said Bella Archibald. 

Archibald pursued an undergraduate degree in biomedical engineering at the University of Utah, where she initially studied the genetics of human health and diseases, particularly those related to epilepsy disorders and white blood cell disorders. "I always knew I was passionate about climate change, but I'd only seen how to impact that area through policy and volunteer opportunities and renewable energy." she said. "I was so lucky to take a synthetic biology class as an undergrad, where they talked about bioremediation, biomanufacturing, and many exciting things people have done to engineer plants and microbes to help counteract the effects of climate change," Archibald described. Encouraged by her undergraduate mentor, Professor Eric Jorgensen, she applied for and received the Goldwater Scholarship. "Goldwater was what set me down this path to pursue a Ph.D., I thought 'if this is something that other people think I can do, maybe I can do it,'" said Archibald. 

She explored graduate programs and ultimately chose Stanford for its commitment to bioengineering solutions for climate change. Archibald joined Professor Jenn Brophy's lab – an emerging leader in plant synthetic biology.

Bioengineering Solutions for Climate Change

Archibald's Ph.D. research focuses on engineering plants and plant root development to create more climate resilient crops. "One of the things we're interested in is how these plants behave across different environments. Suppose you have this set of root structures in these conditions. Is that consistent if I put a plant into a drought environment? Is that consistent if I put it into a stressful hormone environment? I'd love to make a plant that's resilient across multiple stress conditions," said Archibald.

"How do we make plants that will be able to feed a growing population, even as the amount of arable land decreases?"

Archibald uses genetic engineering to help study and control the plant root development process. The process starts by designing a synthetic genetic circuit and introducing it into Agrobacterium –a naturally occurring bacteria that can transfer genetic material into plants. "Agrobacterium can stably integrate DNA into the plant genome, so we can study plant development over multiple generations. You can think of it as a genetic tool, similar to CRISPR," she said. She first conducts tests in the leaves of Nicotiana benthamiana (a tobacco relative) as a simple and faster way to screen if pieces of her genetic circuits work. Then, she introduces the circuits into Arabidopsis thaliana, another plant used as a model organism, to study and control the root structures. 

"The idea is to control plant root development using our cues and to generate a library of plants with different numbers of roots that we can test across different environments. Then we know that the only difference between two plants lies in their root systems, and we can precisely determine which number of lateral roots is actually better for drought tolerance or stress resilience," said Archibald.

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The Inflection Award is organized by Marble, a climate tech venture, and supported by Breakthrough Energy Fellows and the Quadrature Climate Foundation.

The inaugural 2025 Inflection Award cohort includes PhD students and graduates from some of the world's most prestigious institutions, including MIT, Oxford, ETH Zurich, and Stanford. Each awardee is working on cutting-edge solutions to climate change across diverse sectors, from chemical engineering to geosciences, pushing the boundaries of what's possible in climate innovation. Samuel Abernethy, Feng-Yang Chen, Grace Callander,  Daniela Marin, and Brandon Clark were also among the 2025 cohort and were nominated by Stanford University.