People
University of Warwick
Alfonso Jaramillo | Professor Alfonso Jaramillo is the coordinator of the EVOPROG consortium. He holds a PhD in Particle Physics (1999) and a Habilitation thesis (required for professorship) in Biology (2007). After postdoctoral appointments with Professor Wodak (ULB, Brussels) and Professor Karplus (ULP, France and Harvard, USA), he started in 2003 as Assistant Professor at the Ecole Polytechnique (France), becoming tenured in 2005. There, he further developed computational synthetic biology. In 2009, after moving to Genopole (France) as CNRS-senior researcher, he started his experimental synthetic biology lab, utilizing directed evolution, microscopy, microfluidics and 3D printing. In 2013, he opened a second lab at the University of Warwick (UK), where he holds the Chair of Synthetic Biology. Alfonso has previously been the coordinator of the FP6 NEST Pathfinder BiomodularH2 comsortium and scientific coordinator of the FP7 FET Proactive BACTOCOM consortium. He has also participated as partner in 9 EU grants. |
Institute of Systems and Synthetic Biology (Universite d'Evry val d'Essonne) |
Mariel Montesinos |
Mariel is the project manager of EVOPROG. She has more than 9 years experience in the management of European projects (at the Ecole Polytechnique, CNRS-Universite d'Evry and University of Warwick). |
University of Warwick |
William Rostain | William is a PhD candidate in synthetic biology at Warwick University. Trained in Biotechnology (BSc with Honours, University of Edinburgh) and Synthetic Biology (Masters, iSSB, University of Evry), he now works on the engineering of RNA circuits using a combination of computational and experimental approaches. His research interests include the development of methods for abstracting biological design, and high throughput directed evolution. | University of Warwick |
Antonia Sagona | Dr Antonia P. Sagona received her PhD in cancer cell biology from the Faculty of Medicine, University of Oslo. She then received an EMBO Postdoctoral long-term fellowship, hosted in Warwick Medical School (UK). She is currently a Research Fellow in the School of Life Sciences, University of Warwick and her work focuses in establishing an in vitro novel system for phage therapy, consisting of recombinant phages designed to target a specific pathogen in a mammalian cell environment. From February 2016, she will start her own research group as a BBSRC Future Leader Fellow. | University of Warwick |
Rui Rodrigues | Rui is a Research Fellow at the Jaramillo lab in the University of Warwick with responsibilities in the design and implementation of the EVOPROG hardware and software. His mixed background in Bioinformatics and experimental Synthetic Biology are useful in informing development of components towards a general applicability fluidics engine. He is interested in rapid prototyping, protocol automation and in studying evolutionary potential in directed evolution. | University of Warwick |
Michal Legiewicz | Michal Legiewicz PhD is a Research Fellow in Synthetic Virology who coordinates work across interdisciplinary fields of Synthetic Biology, Virology, and Biochemistry, and has passion for developing new technologies. He gained diverse research expertise in the USA while working as a scientist at Yale University, NIH, and the University of Colorado at Boulder. He is excited about developing innovative Genome Engineering technologies and employing them towards generating novel biomolecules that will have broad and long-lasting ramifications in academic and industrial environments. The targeted developments cross-interact with areas of Pharmaceuticals and Biotechnology and Healthcare. | University of Warwick |
Universidad Politécnica de Madrid
Alfonso Rodriguez-Paton | Associate professor at the Facultad de Informática, Universidad Politécnica de Madrid (UPM). Alfonso's interest lies in the interplay of computer science, biology, and engineering. My topics of research are DNA / biomolecular computing, Synthetic Biology, Systems Biology, formal languages and automata theory, and any bio-inspired or unconventional model of computation. | Artificial Intelligence Research Group (Universidad Politécnica de Madrid) |
Iván Pau |
Iván Pau received his PhD. in Accessible Services for the Information Society from the Technical University of Madrid in 2010. His research work started in the area of security in telematics networks applied to telemedicine and telecare services. Currently he is working on lab automation and programmable biology. He has been involved in about 15 R&D projects focused on the integration of ICT with several disciplines (politics, medicine, telecare, biology, etc.) to improve the processes of current solutions. He has been coauthor of about 40 papers including journal and conference proceedings and book chapters. |
Artificial Intelligence Research Group (Universidad Politécnica de Madrid) |
Vishal Gupta | Vishal Gupta is currently working in the Laboratory of Artificial Intelligence in UPM, Spain under the guidance of Dr. Alfonso Rodriguez-Paton. He have been involved with EVOPROG for the last 2 years and have been thoroughly enjoying the multi-disciplinary project. The UPM team is working on providing the computational support for the Evoprog machine. Before working in Spain, he has worked in various labs in Europe and India. The research topics that excite him the most are Evolution, Synthetic Biology, Natural Computation, Artificial Intelligence, Microfluidics and Reproducibility. | Artificial Intelligence Research Group (Universidad Politécnica de Madrid) |
Imperial College London
Mark Isalan | Dr Mark Isalan is a Reader in Gene Network Engineering at Imperial College London and runs a research group in systems and synthetic biology in the Department of Life Sciences. His main research interests are protein and network engineering. After a PhD at the MRC LMB (1996-2000), he held Postdoctoral positions at Gendaq Ltd, UK (Sangamo Biosciences) and EMBL Heidelberg. From 2006-2013, he was a group leader at the EMBL-CRG Systems Biology Unit in Barcelona. He moved to Imperial College London in 2013 and continues to work on designing biological systems that behave predictably and robustly. | Imperial College London |
Andreas Broedel |
Dr. Andreas Broedel is a postdoctoral researcher at Imperial College London. After completing his doctoral thesis in 2014, he started working on the development of a phage evolution platform for the EVOPROG project. |
Imperial College London |
Spanish National Research Council (CSIC)
Víctor de Lorenzo | Víctor de Lorenzo (Madrid, 1957) is a Chemist by training and he holds a position of Research Professor in the Spanish National Research Council (CSIC), where he currently heads the Laboratory of Environmental Molecular Microbiology at the National Center for Biotechnology. After his PhD at the CSIC Institute of Enzymology (1983), he worked at the Pasteur Institute (1984), the University of California at Berkeley (1985-1987), the University of Geneva (1988) and the Federal Center for Biotechnology in Braunschweig until 1991, the year in which he joined the CSIC in Madrid. He specializes in Molecular Biology and Biotechnology of soil bacteria (particularly Pseudomonas putida) as agents for the decontamination of sites damaged by industrial waste. In 2001 this work received the National Award King James I for Environmental Protection. In June 2008 he was honored with the GSK International Award of the American Society for Microbiology, and in October of the same year he was granted a Grand Prix of the French Academy of Sciences. He is a member of the EMBO (European Molecular Biology Organization) and the American Academy of Microbiology, and he has co-chaired with Drew Endy the EC-US Working Group on Synthetic Biology. He also Co-chairs the EC President’s Science and Technology Council. He has published over 335 articles in scientific journals and specialized books, and he has served as advisor of numerous international panels. At present, his work explores the interface between the Synthetic Biology and Environmental Biotechnology | Spanish National Research Council (CSIC) |
Yamal Alramahi |
After his training in Biology, Yamal started his career in research, first in Microbiology and Metagenomics, then in Protein Engineering and always with a growing interest in finding ways to create and optimize new tools based on Biotechnology. He is excited with the art of creating new tools by following the hierarchy of Parts, Devices, Modules and Systems. Yamal wants to create devices for the random diversification of specific sequences in vivo and integrate them in compatible systems. This will allow for multiple consecutive rounds of mutagenesis and accelerated evolution with minimal external intervention. |
Spanish National Research Council (CSIC) |
University of Glasgow
Lee Cronin | Prof Lee Cronin FRSE. Professional Career: 2013-Regius Professor of Chemistry. Alexander von Humboldt research fellow (Uni. of Bielefeld); 1997-1999: Research fellow (Uni. of Edinburgh); 1997: Ph.D. Bio-Inorganic Chemistry, Uni. of York; 1994 BSc. Chemistry, First Class, Uni. of York. Prizes include 2013 BP/RSE Hutton Prize, 2012 RSC Corday Morgan, 2011 RSC Bob Hay Lectureship, a Wolfson-Royal Society Merit Award in 2009, Election to the Royal Society of Edinburgh in 2009. The focus of Cronin’s work is understanding and controlling self-assembly and self-organisation in Chemistry to develop functional molecular and nano-molecular chemical systems (including solar fuel systems); linking architectural design with function and recently engineering system-level functions (e.g. coupled catalytic self-assembly, emergence of inorganic materials and fabrication of inorganic cells that allow complex cooperative behaviours). Much of this work is converging on exploring the assembly and engineering of emergent chemical systems aiming towards ‘inorganic biology’. This work has been presented in over 300 papers and 250 lectures worldwide. It is also worth pointing out that the expertise in the Cronin group (which numbers over 50 people and > £10 M in funding) is unique bringing together inorganic / synthetic chemists, chemical engineers, complex system modelling, evolutionary theory, robotics and AI. | University of Glasgow |
Soichiro Tsuda |
Soichiro Tsuda is a Lord Kelvin-Adam Smith Research Fellow in Synthetic Biology (tenure track) at University of Glasgow. Throughout his research career, He has been working on interdisciplinary research that integrates artificial engineered systems (e.g., electrical and optical sensors) and living biological systems. In Glasgow, he has been working on bacterial evolution (E.coli and cyanobacteria) against various stresses. |
University of Glasgow |
Institute of Systems and Synthetic Biology (Université d'Evry val d'Essonne)
Fabio Polesel | Fabio Polesel received his MA in biomedical engineering and is experienced in the design, fabrication and testing of automated micro- and milli-fluidic devices. He is excited about innovative programmable multi-bioreactors that are used for directed evolution (he has filed a patent in this area). Fabio is a key player in bringing together interfaces of synthetic biology, molecular biology and engineering. He delivers high quality solutions all supported with well-documented SOPs. | Institute of Systems and Synthetic Biology |
Vijai Singh |
Vijai has obtained PhD in Biotechnology (2009) from Uttar Pradesh Technical University, India. He has joined Prof. Jaramillo's Group in 2009 and worked on synthetic oscillators. He is well-versed in cutting edge of synthetic biology technologies including MAGE, small regulatory RNA, CRISPR-dCas9 and microfluidics. Prior to joining again Prof. Jaramillo's Group, he has worked as an Assistant Professor from Dept. of Biotech, Invertis University, India and Postdoc from UNIST, South Korea. Vijai has again joined Professor Jaramillo's Group in October 2014 as a Postdoctoral Fellow at ISSB-UEVE, France. He is constructing automaton as genetic circuits encoding logic gates, which distribute in various configurations into different cell types towards multicellular computing. |
Institute of Systems and Synthetic Biology |