Assess graduate students' ability to design and optimize microbial metabolic pathways for target biosynthesis using steady-state flux balance analysis and dynamic constraint-based modeling. Scope includes model construction (genome-scale or reduced), objective function selection, gene knockouts/overexpression, FBA/FVA and dynamic FBA simulations, parameterizing constraints (uptake rates, enzyme/enzyme-capacity limits), optimization strategies, interpreting flux distributions, and proposing experimentally testable strategies to improve titer, rate, and yield.