My background encompasses both fundamental and synthetic biology, across wet lab and computational settings.
I completed my PhD in Cambridge, where I studied the effect of RNA pseudoknot structures in viral mRNAs on translation and viral fitness. My first postdoctoral position at UCL focused on developing directed evolution methods for protein engineering: specifically, for the selection of nucleic acid-binding proteins by bacterial cell display. I completed a second postdoctoral position at Imperial College, where my research focused on the development of tools for quantifying protein copy numbers in engineered microbial cells, to aid the improvement of robust biological circuits (i.e. controllable and reliable gene expression systems) for biotechnological production of high-value proteins and chemicals. In addition, I was awarded independent funding to investigate novel ribosomal engineering approaches to optimise protein synthesis in engineered cells, which I completed in collaboration with colleagues at the University of Bristol.
Since the summer of 2024, I am a group leader and lecturer at the University of Leeds.