Ophelia Shalini Venturelli

Associate Professor in the Department of Biomedical Engineering

Appointments and Affiliations

  • Associate Professor in the Department of Biomedical Engineering
  • Associate Professor in Molecular Genetics and Microbiology

Contact Information

  • Email Address: ophelia.venturelli@duke.edu
  • Websites:

Education

  • Ph.D. California Institute of Technology, 2013

Research Interests

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

Courses Taught

  • BME 791: Graduate Independent Study
  • BME 590: Special Topics in Biomedical Engineering
  • BME 260L: Modeling Cellular and Molecular Systems

In the News

Representative Publications

  • Ross, Tyler D., Hanhyeok Im, Brennan G. Keogh, Christopher A. Klausmeier, and Ophelia S. Venturelli. “Metabolic interplay drives population cycles in a cross-feeding microbial community.” Nature Communications 16, no. 1 (October 2025): 8919. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-025-63986-y.
  • Liu, Yiyi, Yu-Yu Cheng, Jaron Thompson, Zhichao Zhou, Eugenio I. Vivas, Matthew F. Warren, Julie M. DuClos, Karthik Anantharaman, Federico E. Rey, and Ophelia S. Venturelli. “Decoding the role of the arginine dihydrolase pathway in shaping human gut community assembly and health-relevant metabolites.” Cell Systems 16, no. 5 (May 2025): 101292. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cels.2025.101292.
  • Lan, Freeman, Jason Saba, Tyler D. Ross, Zhichao Zhou, Katie Krauska, Karthik Anantharaman, Robert Landick, and Ophelia S. Venturelli. “Publisher Correction: Massively parallel single-cell sequencing of diverse microbial populations.” Nature Methods 22, no. 2 (February 2025): 446. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41592-024-02570-6.
  • Sulaiman, Jordy Evan, Jaron Thompson, Pak Lun Kevin Cheung, Yili Qian, Jericha Mill, Isabella James, Hanhyeok Im, Eugenio I. Vivas, Judith Simcox, and Ophelia S. Venturelli. “Phocaeicola vulgatus shapes the long-term growth dynamics and evolutionary adaptations of Clostridioides difficile.” Cell Host & Microbe 33, no. 1 (January 2025): 42-58.e10. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.chom.2024.12.001.
  • Weiss, Anna, Matti Gralka, Karoline Faust, David Basanta Gutierrez, Kenneth Pienta, Xu Zhou, Ophelia S. Venturelli, et al. “How can concepts from ecology enable insights about cellular communities?” Cell Systems 15, no. 11 (November 2024): 1103. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cels.2024.10.009.