Professor Richard Kitney OBE (furthest right) is Co-Director of SynbiCite, the UK’s National Industrial Translation Centre for Engineering Biology, which was established in 2013 to accelerate and promote the commercial exploitation of engineering biology research and applications.

Research in the Department of Bioengineering uses engineering principles to create new biological systems and to better understand and manipulate biology. We aim to engineer the biochemical processes that can help address key societal challenges, such as healthcare and environmental sustainability. 
 

Our research spans synthetic biology, engineering biology, sustainable food, predictive models of DNA, measuring and modelling interactions between species, biomaterials for healthcare, the home and fashion, as well as engineered proteins and cells as immunotherapies.

 
Our work is highly interdisciplinary. It includes computational modelling, AI and machine learning, automated platform development, genetic circuit engineering, studying interactions among multiple cells and organisms, metabolic engineering, cell-free synthetic biology, biomimetics, biomaterials, and biological engineering.

Academic staff in this area

Sam Au

Sam Au
Cancer cell biomechanics and microfluidics

Pedro Ballester

Pedro Ballester
Designing and discovering active molecules for pharmaceutical and agrochemical targets

Sonja Billerbeck

Sonja Billerbeck
Turning microbial functions into applications using engineered biology and computational tools

Adam Celiz

Adam Celiz
Determination of mechanisms of biomaterial-driven tissue repair and regeneration

Tom Ellis

Tom Ellis
Synthetic biology, engineering cells and regulatory gene networks

Firat Guder

Firat Guder
Producing transducer systems to connect the chemical, biological and physical world with computers

Claire Higgins

Claire Higgins
Cell reprogramming via extracellular or intracellular mechanisms

Jun Ishihara

Jun Ishihara
Protein design, translational immunology, and immuno-engineering for the development of new drugs

Richard Kitney

Richard Kitney
Engineering biology, synthetic biology, biological standards and data sharing

Rodrigo Ledesma-Amaro

Rodrigo Ledesma-Amaro
Metabolic engineering, synthetic biology, microbial communities, alternative protein

Sophie Morse

Sophie Morse
Modulating the activity of neurons andglia with therapeutic ultrasound

Tom Ouldridge

Tom Ouldridge
Theoretical principles of molecular systems with nucleic acids

Darryl Overby

Darryl Overby
Cellular biophysics, microenvironmental regulation of cellular behaviour, pharmacology & signalling

Claire Stanley

Claire Stanley
Organ-on-Chip technology

Reiko Tanaka

Reiko Tanaka
Translational systems biology, control and dynamical systems

Research highlights

More Bioengineering news

First microbes blast off testing production of food for space travel

Plastic-free vegan leather that dyes itself grown from bacteria

Cell ‘hands’ to unlock doors in health research, drug design, and bioengineering