Interdisciplinary & Collaborative

Mixing biology with mathematics, engineering and computing

As with any biological engineering group, we take the Richard Feynman quote "What I cannot create, I do not understand" as scripture. While developing a greater understanding of existing biological systems, we also aim to develop new systems that can help to solve some of the key challenges facing the world. To do this we combine wet and dry lab work to explore three inter-related areas: microbial communities, self-organisation, and quantitative methods.

"A scientific drawing of a synthetic microbial community in the style of Santiago Ramón y Cajal" generated by DALL·E

Latest news

05/11/2023 - Xmas lunch

We had a joint Christmas lunch the Barnes group this year. It was great to unwind a bit with everyone and to celebrate the end of an exciting year.

29/11/2023 - MathBio meeting

I gave a talk at the MathBio series organised by Philip Pierce. It was the first time in a long time that I could go into detail about our modelling approaches and get feedback from a group of mathematicians.

15/11/2023 - IPLS meetup

I was fortunate to be invited to give a talk at the UCL Institute for the Physics of Living Systems meetup. I'm incrementaly getting better a presenting the spatial computing work.

Louie, Alex and Casey enjoying a beer at a pub in Bristol

08/11/2023 - Synthetic Biology UK

We all went to Bristol for this year's SBUK conference. It has always been one of my favourite conferences, and is a lovely opportunity to catch up with friends and colleagues in the field. I had the opportunity to present the work that we recently finished up in Chris Barnes' group on spatial computing.

An antimicrobial peptide expression platform for targeting pathogenic bacterial species

23/10/2023 - New pre-print

Chris Barnes' group has a new pre-print on bioRxiv, that I helped with, detailing our work targeting pathegenic bacteria. We created a new platform for the delivery of antimicrobial peptides using engineered bacteria.

Read it here

02/10/2023 - Welcome Renlong, Mod and Griffin!

We are very lucky to have three new students join the group for their final year dissertation projects.

Members

25/09/2023 - Welcome Casey and Louie!

Welcome Casey Chen and Louie Destouches! It's really starting to feel like a research group now. I'm very excited to see what we can all achieve together.

Members

22/09/2023 - CDB "Away" Day

I helped to organise the department away day. We held it in a lovely space in the art nouveau Mary Ward House. As a relative newbie in the department, it was great to have the opportunity to meet everyone, put some names to faces, and have some fun.

11/09/2023 - Leuven Summer School

I was in Leuven to give a talk to students on a summer school for Design and Control of Microbial Communities. It was a fantastic few days, arranged by Didier Gonze, Karoline Faust and Leo Lahti.

24/07/2023 - Welcome Alice Cook!

Welcome Alice Cook as the first PhD student in the group. She will be working on self-organising cellular communities in collaboration with Katie Bentley at the Francis Crick Institute.

Members

12/07/2023 - Synbio Africa 2.0

I was honored to be invited to present at the Synbio Africa conference in Kampala, Uganda. It was a wonderful opportunity to meet many new researchers and hear about challenges that are unique to biological engineering in Africa.

Emergent digital bio-computation through spatial diffusion and engineered bacteria

07/07/2023 - New pre-print

We have a new pre-print on bioRxiv detailing our work with Chris Barnes' group on spatial computing. We developed a new digital computation platform using gradients of diffusible molecules that are interpreted by simply engineered E. coli.

Read it here

05/06/2023 - Manchester Microbiome Modelling Workshop

I had a great time at the Microbiome Modelling Workshop orgainsed by Eriko Takano at Manchester University. Two days learning alot about soil and human microbiomes, genome scale and dynamic modelling, and a whole host of other things. The conference dinner was at the newly refurbished Manchester Museum - with a whale skeleton suspended above the dining tables.

09/03/2023 - Visiting the Ledesma-Amaro Group

I was very priveleged to be invited to give a talk to Rodrigo's group at Imperial College London. Their work in the area of microbial communities is excellent, and it was wonderful to have some time to talk science at seek his advice.

24/02/2023 - Visiting the Biocompute Lab

I had a fantastic day visiting Tom Gorochowski and the Biocompute Lab at Bristol University. It was great to find out what everyone was working on and to share some of our latest work.

15/02/2023 - What is the key challenge in engineering microbiomes?

I was asked to contribute a piece to a Cell Systems collection of opinions on the key challenges in engineering microbiomes. There are some fascinating ideas in there and it is a real privelage to be included alongside some incredible scientists.

20/01/2023 - Otim Geoffrey from SynBio Africa

I had a great time chatting to Otim about all of his work with SynBio Africa. It certainly seems like there's a lot to be excited about. But I don't know where he finds all of his energy!

18/01/2023 - Future food and drink

I attended a fantastic workshop organised by Miao Guo to discuss future innovations in food production with researchers from King's College London and the food industry.

03/01/2023 - Funded PhD positions available

I have two EPSRC funded PhD positions available to start in Autumn 2023. The first project is working with Chris Barnes to produce a new platform for the assembly of microbial communities. The second project is working with Mike Sulu to understand the limits of using microbial communities in future bio-industrial applications.

Join Us

01/01/2023 - Hello world!

Today is the day I start my own research group!