Jillian Silbert Paull is a PhD candidate in the Systems Synthetic and Quantitative Biology program at Harvard. In the Sabeti Lab, her research is focused on detection and sequencing of SARS-CoV-2 and other viral pathogens in wastewater, via computational and experimental approaches.

Jillian studied Molecular Biology and Quantitative Biology at Princeton University, graduating magna cum laude in 2018. Her thesis research in the labs of Danelle Devenport and Jared Toettcher involved a live-cell screen to measure Erk dynamics; this research won university awards and was published in Cell Systems (2nd author, 2020). After graduating, she pursued a Fulbright scholarship in Madrid, where she worked in the lab of Victor de Lorenzo to develop experimental tools for use in Pseudomonas Putida (published 1st author in ACS Synthetic Biology in 2021; published 2nd author in BioDesign Research in 2022).

Outside of the lab, Jillian spends her time visiting family, traveling, or often doing both simultaneously.