FrancescaI have been a candidate on the EPSRC Centre for Doctoral Training in BioDesign engineering programme since October 2019, jointly supervised by Dr Thomas Ouldridge and Prof Molly Stevens. I am currently completing an MRes in Systems and Synthetic Biology at Imperial College London as part of this programme. Prior to this, I graduated with a BSc in Biological Sciences from Imperial College London in 2019.

The focus of my research in Thomas Ouldridge’s group is the rational design of DNA nanostructures for disease diagnostics and prognostics. Specifically, I implement simulation-guided design of DNA nanostructures and modelling of DNA interactions in order to achieve desired sequence, domain, and whole-reaction dynamics. These principles are then applied in vivo for detection of disease markers including microRNA molecules