Congratulations to Cohort 2’s Marjorie Watts who won the Best Poster Award at ECMTB 2026 (European Conference on Mathematical and Theoretical Biology) in Austria earlier this month. 👏

Our Cohort 1 student Robin Henry's US conference trip didn't stop at SEED! Robin also presented his research at the International Workshop on Bio-Design Automation (IWBDA), where he shared a talk on Myriad, his GPU-accelerated platform for closed-loop single-cell experiments.

In June Cohort 1 student, Robin Henry, attended the Synthetic Biology: Engineering, Evolution, & Design (SEED) conference at the Colorado Convention Centre in Denver. SEED is the world's largest academic synthetic biology conference. This year's programme covered everything from cell-free systems

This week, we welcomed Saif Ur-Rehman to Bristol. Saif talked about the data foundations behind biological foundation models and about the lab-in-the-loop platform they are building at Outpost Bio to predict how the gut microbiome shapes drug response.

A few weeks ago, cohort 2 student Aoife attended London Protein Design Day at Imperial College London. The conference showcased new research, platforming master’s students to principal investigators working in immunoinformatics, generative model development, and enzyme and biosensor engineering.

This week, we caught up with Maria Tasca from Cohort 1 in Bristol, to learn about the Data Hazards workshop she ran at the AIBIO conference in Aberdeen. ⚠️ Maria introduced the concept of hazard labels for data science; what they are, how they are used, and their importance in data science projects.

Congratulations to Cohort 2 student Alfie Wingfield, who has spent the last few months co-organising a conference on process scale-up in biology and chemistry, one of very few events of its kind in the UK. Bringing together speakers from academia and industry, the event explored the challenges...

Congratulations to Robin Henry on being a co-author of a paper published in Nature earlier this year! As part of his 2nd project supervised by Harrison Steel, Robin contributed to sample preparation, microscopy experiments, & data analysis, earning fourth authorship on this exciting publication.

In the first year, EngBio CDT students work on two 11-week projects.These projects are inter-disciplinary & aligned with the four major Engineering Biology research areas: -Robust methods for bioengineering -Rational biomolecular & biosystems design -Evolution-guided biodesign -Digital cells & AI

Earlier this week, we were delighted to welcome Rob Nunan from IQVIA Laboratories to Bristol. Rob delivered a seminar reflecting on his career journey - from PhD studies and postdoc research to roles within industry - providing advice about the challenges and opportunities along the way.

As part of their Innovation training, last Friday, Cohort 2 took part in a ‘Pitch and Presentation’ session led by Dave Jarman, @bristoluni.bsky.social Centre for Innovation and Entrepreneurship.

Last week, the EngBio CDT attended the Festival of Nature in Bristol as part of their RRI training. Working with the Bristol Children's Scrapstore, they created interactive displays to educate the public about Engineering Biology and its potential place in nature and society.

2026’s EngBio CDT Summer School has come to a close! A huge thank you to all involved in making this year’s Summer School possible. From speakers to session leads, from students to organisers, it’s been a pleasure to host everyone and participate in such an enjoyable and inspiring few days.

It’s the last day of our EngBio Summer School! We’re starting this am with a workshop from Dr. Katy R Mahoney exploring strategies & techniques to reduce that familiar feeling of imposter syndrome. Then we’ll look at how to get our point across & communicate effectively in different PhD settings.

We’ve been joined by Julie Castleman from the The Charlie Waller Trust to explore how we can protect our wellbeing in an often demanding and challenging research world. We’ve been exploring how to identify our personal stressors, the coping strategies we can use, and who to lean on for help.

Day 2 of the EngBio CDT Summer School has commenced! This morning, we’re thrilled to welcome our very own Jack Dalton and Vivenne Kuh who are leading a session on Responsible Research in Practice: tackling biosecurity challenges.

Over lunch, our Cohort 2 students showcased their recent short projects through poster sessions and this afternoon, we continued our programme of inspiring Engineering Biology talks:

We’ve had a brilliant morning at our second CDT Summer School with talks from guest speakers and our students. We welcomed Joshua Rees-Garbutt, who shared his journey from PhD to launching an EngBio startup, offering valuable tips for entrepreneurship in the sector.

We’re excited to kick off our annual Summer School this week at St Cross College in Oxford. Over the next three days, we’ll be bringing together a fantastic community of EngBio enthusiasts for a programme of talks, discussions, and training.

Meet our student representatives!👋 Our student reps have an important role in positively influencing the student experience in the EngBio CDT, by speaking with their fellow cohorts and providing feedback to the CDT team. We would like to thank our student reps for all of their hard work! 🌟

We caught up with Jack Dalton, a Cohort 1 student at @ox.ac.uk about his work in the Steel Lab: using automated evolution machines + AI co-scientists to steer bacterial evolution faster and more predictably for biomanufacturing, food, drugs, and even future space applications.

Cohort 2 attended RRI training last week at Belmont Estate. BE’s mission focuses on environmental restoration, sustainable food production, climate action & reconnecting people with nature. Our students took time to consider how their research impacts nature & how we can all become better ancestors.

Yesterday, the EngBio CDT's cohort 2 students finished their first short research project! Well done everyone for submitting your posters!🎉

This morning, Oxford celebrated May Morning 🌅 Oxford's May Morning celebrations date back more than 500 years. The tradition sees thousands of people gather along the High Street and Magdalen Bridge at 6am on 1st May to hear Magdalen College Choir herald the arrival of spring 🌿

Reminder: The deadline for this exciting Lecturer in Engineering Biology role at University of Bristol is this Sunday 26th April More information 👇

EngBio CDT@engbiocdt.bsky.social · 4mo ago

🚨 New opportunity! 🚨 We’re looking to recruit a Lecturer in Engineering Biology at the University of Bristol Faculty of Science and Engineering. This is an exciting opportunity to join a vibrant, interdisciplinary research environment at a time of significant institutional investment and growth.

In March, student Marj Watts attended the British Applied Maths Colloquium (BAMC) at the University of East Anglia. Marj presented her masters dissertation via a poster. The poster was on modelling heterogeneous cell migration of chemotactic cells that generate the chemotactic gradient locally

In December, Robin Henry attended the CDC conference in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil! A fantastic opportunity to engage with leading researchers and explore cutting-edge developments in control theory and its applications. Robin said: I mostly attended talks from the "Control theory and Methods for...

🚨 New opportunity! 🚨 We’re looking to recruit a Lecturer in Engineering Biology at the University of Bristol Faculty of Science and Engineering. This is an exciting opportunity to join a vibrant, interdisciplinary research environment at a time of significant institutional investment and growth.

The latest Innovation Training session for our Cohort 2 students focused on Market Research and how to build something people actually want. On Monday, students explored different aspects such as research design and methodologies, and how to gather and analyse information on customer needs,...

Last week, Kerstin participated in a panel discussion at the Advanced Therapies Congress, exploring what skills we need to efficiently deliver impactful therapeutics and diagnostics in the advanced therapy space.