Join us
What we can offer you
You will leave with a rare pairing that techbio and pharma automation actively hire for: hands-on out-of-equilibrium chemistry and autonomous-experimentation skills.
You will be embedded in a highly collaborative environment of around 40 researchers, including the London BioFoundry and the Elani Lab in the Department of Chemical Engineering, .
You will have the opportunity to collaborate with world-leading researchers across synthetic cell engineering, synthetic biology, automation and AI for control at Imperial and with our partners across the UK, Europe, USA and Japan.
Imperial has world-leading resources and is in the heart of London.
Who we are looking for
We are recruiting Master’s students from chemistry and biochemistry backgrounds who are excited by systems chemistry, microfluidics, automation and molecular systems design. You will be familiar with essential organic chemistry or biochemistry fundamentals and basic molecular biology techniques, such as enzymatic assays. Additional experience with molecular biology tools, such as cloning and protein purification, is useful.
You may be a good fit if you:
- have a background in chemistry, biochemistry, physical chemistry or a related field, and like analysing dynamical systems;
- are drawn to out-of-equilibrium or systems chemistry and want your network to do something—hold, switch or pump—rather than sit at equilibrium;
- are curious about microfluidics, lab automation and using machine learning to guide experiments, even with no prior experience;
- are comfortable at the interface of disciplines and unbothered by a mix of wet-lab work, a little scripting and a little physics.
Example projects
A · Chemistry and bottom-up synthetic biology
- Example project A1: Catalysis-driven active transport across synthetic cell-mimic membranes.
- Example project A2: Light-driven nucleic acid driving into lipid membrane containers.
B · Self-driving lab technology
Platform- and automation-leaning projects:
- Example project B1: Build automated microfluidic continuous-flow reactors for chemiosmotic reaction-network characterisation and exploration.
- Example project B2: Establish minimal measurement obligation sets for high-throughput biomolecular systems engineering pipelines.
- Example project B3: Robust control of droplet microfluidics.
For the chemist drawn to microfluidics and machine learning who wants to build the loop itself.
C · Model systems for studying the emergence of cell-like behaviours
Biophysics-leaning projects:
- Example project C1: Investigating proto-homeostasis in minimal cell systems.
- Example project C2: Tuning chemically driven membrane-potential generation with a light-responsive proton pump.