Julius was named the recipient of the 2016 ACS Synthetic Biology Young Investigator Award. Established in 2014, the award recognizes the contribution of a scientist who has made a major impact on the field of synthetic biology, early in their career. Julius was presented with the award and gave a talk on the latest research of the Lucks Lab at the Synthetic Biology: Engineering, Evolution and Design (SEED) Meeting held in Chicago on July 18-21 at the historic Hilton Chicago.