BrisEngBio Directorate
Dek Woolfson is Professor of Chemistry and Biochemistry; Principal Investigator of BrisEngBio, the UKRI-funded Bristol Centre for Engineering Biology; Director of the Bristol BioDesign Institute at the University of Bristol; founding member of the Max Planck Bristol Centre for Minimal Biology; and Founder of Rosa Biotech. Dek took his first degree in Chemistry at the University of Oxford, UK in 1987. In 1991, he gained a PhD in Chemistry and Biochemistry at the University of Cambridge. He then did post-doctoral research at University College London (1991–92) and the University of California, Berkeley (1992–94). He returned to the UK to take up a Lectureship in Biochemistry at the University of Bristol (1994–95). From 1996–2005 he was Lecturer through to Professor of Biochemistry at the University of Sussex. He moved back Bristol in 2005 to a joint chair in Chemistry and Biochemistry. Dek’s research has always been at the interface between chemistry and biology, applying chemical methods and principles to understand biological phenomena such as protein folding and stability. He has a long-standing interest in the challenge of rational protein design, and how this can be applied in synthetic biology and biotechnology. His particular emphasis is on making completely new protein structures not known to natural biology using a combination of rational and computational design. The current focuses of his group are in the parametric design of protein structures, assemblies and materials, and porting these into living cells to intervene in and to augment natural biological functions. In 2011, Dek became the first recipient of the Medimmune Protein and Peptide Science Award of the Royal Society of Chemistry; in 2014, he received a Royal Society Wolfson Research Merit Award, and he gained an ERC Advanced Grant; in 2016 he won the Interdisciplinary Prize of the Royal Society of Chemistry; and in 2020 he received a Humboldt Research Award (also known as the Humboldt Prize).
Thomas Gorochowski is a Royal Society University Research Fellow and Associate Professor of Biological Engineering based in the School of Biological Sciences at the University of Bristol. Prior to joining Bristol, he was awarded a Marie Skłodwska-Curie Postdoctoral Fellowship at DSM in the Netherlands where he worked on large-scale automated strain development for precision gene expression in bacteria. He then joined the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, USA as a Postdoctoral Associate where he developed the initial sequencing analysis pipelines that form part of the large-scale efforts at the MIT-Broad Foundry for Synthetic Biology and explored new ways that deep-sequencing could be harnessed for debugging large and complex genetic circuitry. In 2016, he was awarded a BrisSynBio Fellowship to set up his own lab at the University of Bristol, and in 2017 received a five-year Royal Society University Fellowship to grow his research programme further. In 2021, he was made a Turing Fellow of The Alan Turing Institute to explore data-centric approaches to biological design. Since returning to Bristol, he has rapidly established a diverse research group pioneering the application of novel sequencing methods for the rational engineering of biological systems across scales. His research has been published in leading peer-reviewed journals and he provides leadership as Co-Director of the Bristol BioDesign Institute and the UKRI-funded Bristol Centre for Engineering Biology (BrisEngBio), and as part of the Scientific Steering Committee for the Synthetic Biology Open Language (SBOL).
Lucia Marucci is a Fellow of the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC), and Co-Director of the Bristol Centre for Engineering Biology (BrisEngBio) and the Bristol BioDesign Institute (BBI). She holds a PhD in Automatic Engineering, and she was a European Molecular Biology (EMBO) fellow and a Medical Research Council (MRC) new investigator. Her interdisciplinary group works at the interface of systems and synthetic biology with control engineering and computer science, and is focused on the development of rational and automated strategies to understand and design complex cellular phenotypes in bacterial and mammalian cells.
Kathleen Sedgley is the Bristol BioDesign Institute (BBI) Scientific Manager. She oversees the coordination of the synthetic and engineering biology portfolio across the University of Bristol and the underpinning partnerships. She manages several high value and strategic BBI projects including UKRI-funded BrisEngBio, the Max Planck Bristol Centre for Minimal Biology, and the ADDovenom EU Future Emerging Technologies Consortium. Kathleen has a background in pharmacology and neuroendocrinology, and has over 15 years’ experience in research management. She is an active member of the UK synthetic and engineering biology research managers network and has been instrumental in supporting the delivery of Bristol’s vision to be a world leading institution for synthetic and engineering biology research and innovation.
Kerstin Kinkelin is Innovation Manager at the Bristol BioDesign Institute, where she works with academics to identify opportunities for translation and partnering presented by their research in synthetic and engineering biology. She also oversees a wide programme of activities for early career researchers to develop their skills in translational research and innovation. A biochemist by training, Kerstin moved into research management after several years in research in Germany and the UK. She has experience in researcher development, research funding and research programme management, working for organisations such as the Francis Crick Institute, The Royal Society, and Blood Cancer UK. She is also a Trustee for the Daphne Jackson Trust.
BrisEngBio Scientific Advisory Board
Kate Robson Brown (Chair) is Professor of Biological Anthropology and Engineering Mathematics at the University of Bristol, a Fellow of the Alan Turing Institute for Data Science and AI, and co-Chair of UK Space Academic Network. She is Director of the Jean Golding Institute for Data Science and Data Intensive Research (JGI), a lay chair for Health Education Southwest (Severn Deanery), and Chair of the BrisEngBio Scientific Advisory Board. Her research explores the microstructure of living tissues and their response to changing and extreme environments including micro and hyper gravity; innovating methodologies for imaging and the capture, computational modelling, analysis and interpretation of data describing complex material and structural characterisation and performance. Application areas include the development of digital twins, predictive modelling of physiological response to extreme environments, forensic science, modelling the regulation of hard tissue growth and development, and understanding programmed transformation in 4D materials. She is an advocate of offering data science learning opportunities in schools and as extracurricular programmes in University; she is an academic lead for the DataFace project developed with Cheltenham Festivals, and develops and promotes short course training through the JGI.
Harry Destecroix is the founder of the Science Creates ecosystem and Managing Partner of Science Creates Ventures. He is a scientist, entrepreneur and investor, and the co-founder of Ziylo, the hugely successful University of Bristol spin-out company. Harry is passionate about building great companies and providing the optimum ecosystem to facilitate their growth and development.
Steve A. Kay holds the David L. Lee – Simon Ramo Chair in Health Sciences and Technology. He currently serves as the Director of the USC Michelson Center for Convergent Bioscience, the Co-Director of the Harold Rae Brown Center for Cancer Drug Discovery at the USC Norris Comprehensive Cancer Center, is a University and Provost Professor of Neurology, Biomedical Engineering and Quantitative and Computational Biology at the Keck School of Medicine of USC and was the founding Director of MESH Academy. He held the position as the 21st dean of the USC Dornsife College of Letters, Arts and Sciences from 2012 to 2015. He is one of the world’s top experts on the genetics and genomics of circadian rhythms. Having published more than 200 papers, he was named by Thomson Reuters as one of “The World’s Most Influential Scientific Minds” consecutively from 2014 to 2022 and has been cited in Science magazine’s “Breakthroughs of the Year” three times since 1997. In 2008, he was elected as a member of the National Academy of Sciences of the USA. In 2009, he was elected as a fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, and in 2011 he was awarded the American Society of Plant Biologists’ 2011 Martin Gibbs Medal for his pioneering research on biological clocks in both plants and animals. In 2019, he was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of London in recognition of his contributions to science. In 2020, he was appointed as University Professor at the University of Southern California in recognition of his outstanding scholarship in the field of genetics and genomics of circadian rhythms. In 2020, he received the Directors Award in Research from the Society for Research on Biological Rhythms. His research is currently focused on the development of small molecule drugs that target circadian clock proteins as experimental therapeutics in several cancers. Prior to joining USC in 2012, he served as dean of biological sciences at the University of California, San Diego. He also has held faculty positions at The Rockefeller University, University of Virginia and The Scripps Research Institute, as well as served as the VP of Discovery Research at the Genomics Institute of the Novartis Research Foundation, where he focused on using high throughput technologies to push novel development candidates into the Novartis clinical pipeline. He served as President of The Scripps Research Institute from 2015 to 2016. In addition, he has founded several biotechnology companies, the most recent of which is Synchronicity Pharma LLC based in South San Francisco. He received his PhD and DSc from the University of Bristol, United Kingdom.
Anne Osbourn, a microbial and plant biologist, is Group Leader at the John Innes Centre, and a Fellow of the Royal Society. Her research focuses on plant natural products – biosynthesis, function, and mechanisms of metabolic diversification. An important advance from the Osbourn laboratory has been the discovery that the genes needed to make particular natural products are often organised in clusters in plant genomes like ‘beads on a string’, a finding that has greatly accelerated the discovery of new pathways and chemistries. Anne has established a synthetic biology platform based on transient plant expression that provides rapid access to previously inaccessible natural products and analogs at gram scale. Together these step changes open up new routes to combine genomics and synthetic biology to synthesize and access previously inaccessible natural products and analogs for medicinal, agricultural and industrial applications. Anne is also a poet, and founded and leads the Science, Art and Writing (SAW) initiative, an interdisciplinary science education outreach programme.
Anike Te is the Chief Strategy Officer and Group Business Development Board member of Lucideon Group Ltd., an international materials design, development, and commercialisation consultancy. In this global-facing role, Anike advises Lucideon on strategic direction and how to develop and commercialise key new activities around technology trends and drivers of the future in healthcare and other industries. She has recently turned her attention to the potential of engineering biology for unlocking sustainable, next generation materials. She is Aegis Professor of Engineering Biology at the University of Bristol and serves on the Scientific Advisory Board of BrisEngBio. In this role, Anike supports the development of spin-outs, advises on the growth of industrial networks and the technology transfer from academia to industry such as for novel therapeutics, diagnostics, and materials. Before specializing in strategic evaluations and company growth, Anike gained clinical experience as a dentist and led teams in managing clinical trials worldwide for two companies focusing on implant-based dental restorations, Nobel Biocare Services AG – while it was part of Danaher Corporation – and Southern Implants. Anike held positions in internal auditing at KPMG and is a Certified Internal Auditor. In December 2020, she was invited to join the British-Swiss Chamber of Commerce Zurich Chapter Leadership Team. Anike is based in Switzerland. She is passionate about finding the best solutions for healthcare and in developing new technologies for sustainability purposes.
David Tew is a Senior Scientific Director and GSK Senior Fellow Alumnus, and a member of GSK’s Synthetic Biochemistry group. His role is to seek new aspects of emerging bioscience, particularly the application of Synthetic Biology, and adapt it for use in new drug manufacturing processes ranging from traditional small molecules through to biopharmaceuticals. Most recently David has been leading a project to apply Synthetic Biology to redesign the manufacture of therapeutic oligonucleotides. This has resulted in a platform approach to therapeutic oligonucleotide synthesis and manufacture that is both scalable and more sustainable than current approaches. David has over 30 years of experience in the pharmaceutical industry including early drug discovery, mechanistic enzymology, assay development, reagent generation and, most recently, the application of Synthetic Biology. In 2018 David was appointed as The Royal Society Entrepreneur in Residence at Bristol University working with BrisSynBio and the Bristol BioDesign Institute. David held this position until 2022. During the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic, David lead the innovation workstream for the Cambridge COVID-19 Testing Centre, a collaboration between AstraZeneca, GlaxoSmithKline, and the University of Cambridge.