Dr Lorenzo Di Michele

Dr Lorenzo Di MicheleAssistant Professor in BiotechnologyDepartment of Chemical Engineering and BiotechnologyBiography

I completed my undergraduate and master’s degrees in physics at the University of L'Aquila (Abruzzo, Italy) in 2010, before moving to the Cavendish Laboratory, University of Cambridge for a PhD in soft condensed matter. After graduating in 2013, I took up an Oppenheimer Early Career Research Fellowship, followed by a Leverhulme Early Career Research Fellowship in 2016 and a Royal Society University Research Fellowship in 2018. I was then awarded an ERC starting grant and moved to the Department of Chemistry at Imperial College London as Lecturer and then Senior Lecturer, before returning to the University of Cambridge, Department of Chemical Engineering and Biotechnology in 2022.

Research

My group applies the tools of nucleic acid (DNA and RNA) nanotechnology to constructing advanced biomimetic systems, often in the form of "synthetic cells". These are fully synthetic agents constructed from the bottom up to replicate functionalities typically associated to living cells, such as adaptation, motion, growth, division, metabolism etc. We study synthetic cells both as models for fundamental biophysical studies and potential applicability in healthcare.