Tom Ellis

Summary

Tom Ellis is leading a research team in synthetic genome engineering and synthetic biology in the Department of Bioengineering. He has track record in synthetic biology, being author of over 60 publications in synthetic biology including work in Science, Cell, Nature Methods, Nature Biotechnology, PNAS and Nature Reviews. He has led the UK-funded project to build a synthetic yeast chromosome for the international synthetic yeast project (Sc2.0) and been a pioneer in the field of Engineered Living Materials. He co-leads the teaching of Imperial’s synthetic biology undergraduate module and has won multiple awards for teaching and for supervision of iGEM teams. His research focuses on developing the foundational tools for design-led synthetic genomics and synthetic biology, focusing on research projects in yeast (S. cerevisiae), and particularly projects to grow new functional biomaterials. His group also do a wide variety of other synthetic biology projects relevant for industry and medicine.

BACKGROUND

Tom Ellis obtained his PhD from the University of Cambridge under the supervision of Michael J. Waring in 2004, examining drugs that bind directly to the promoter elements of cancer genes. Prof Ellis followed-up his PhD research at a the biotech company Spirogen where he set-up a biological screening unit and developed high-throughput assays to characterise the interactions between drugs and oncogene promoters.

Prof Ellis returned to academic research in 2006 to spend two years investigating synthetic biology at Boston University, USA. Working in one of the founding groups of the field under the supervision of Jim Collins, Prof Ellis devised a synthesis-based library approach to engineering gene regulatory networks and was able to model and implement this method in nonlinear systems and with phenotypes relevant to biofuel and beer production.

In 2009 before joining Imperial College, Prof Ellis returned to the UK to research synthetic biology at the Institute of Biotechnology at University of Cambridge.

Research interests

Tom Ellis's main research interests are:

• synthetic genomics
• engineered living materials
• synthetic biology
• genome engineering
• the function of DNA sequence
• programming biosynthesis of new therapeutics