Biomolecular control group

Systems & Synthetic Biology at the University of Edinburgh

Our two locations: the Informatics Forum and the CH Waddington Building in Edinburgh.

what we do

Our team develops computational methods to study molecular processes in living cells. We use mathematics to understand natural networks and to design novel systems for biotechnology and biomedicine. We employ a wide range of methods, such as machine learning, control theory, stochastic analysis and network theory. Large parts of our work are in collaboration with Systems and Synthetic Biology labs in the UK and abroad.

You can read more about our work in this piece.

who we are

The group lead is Diego Oyarzún and includes research students and postdocs. Together we gather expertise in many disciplines like machine learning, mathematics, biochemistry and bioinformatics.

where we work

We are very lucky to be located at the School of Informatics and the School of Biological Sciences of the University of Edinburgh, in one of the most vibrant European capitals. We are members of the Edinburgh Centre for Engineering Biology.

recent papers

news

May 20, 2023 Aryo, Achille and Michal have put out a new preprint on the Vaxformer, a generative protein language model that can help the design of vaccines.
May 10, 2023 Our perspective piece on deep learning for sequence-to-expression modelling has been published in Current Opinion in Biotechnology.
Mar 20, 2023 Our Turing Workshop on AI, Engineering Biology & Beyond was a resounding success, with over 100 participants from across the UK and abroad.
Feb 3, 2023 Charlotte’s paper on Bayesian optimization of biological circuits is out as preprint. Congrats!
Jan 15, 2023 A warm welcome to Ramin Hasibi (U Bergen, Norway) and Camilo Mahnert (PUCV, Chile) as visiting PhD students to the lab.
Jan 5, 2023 Evangelos’ paper on deep learning models of protein expression has been published in Nature Communications.
Dec 12, 2022 We are organising the first Turing Workshop in AI, Engineering Biology & Beyond, applications are open to join us 13-14 March 2023 in Edinburgh!
Dec 2, 2022 Arin was selected for a Data Study Group at the Alan Turing Institute in London, congrats!
Sep 29, 2022 Lilli won a 2022 Young Software Engineer of the Year Award for her work on machine learning for prediction of essential genes. Amazing achievement, congrats! Check her prize clip here from minute 7:00 onwards.
Sep 27, 2022 Charlotte is organizing an exciting meeting on Synthetic Biology in the Age of Machine Learning at the upcoming ICSB 2022 in Berlin.