Leverhulme Centre for Cellular Bionics
Imperial College London

Cellular bionics will unlock how far the boundaries between the living and non-living can be blurred. It is a new discipline that will revolutionise the landscape of biodesign by engineering symbiosis between living and non-living systems, coupling the advantages of biological life with those of synthetic systems (quasi-life), leading to synthetic cells.

This Leverhulme Doctoral Scholarship Programme (LDSP) will bring together more than 60 world leading researchers from across 11 Departments and Institutes, ensuring that its students benefit from exceptional training and research capability in areas relevant to their PhD research. These students will work at the interface between the physical sciences, life sciences and engineering, pushing the boundaries of multi-disciplinary training and dovetailing with the global rise of ‘convergence’ science where engineering and physical sciences join forces with the life sciences. The LDSP is embedded within FABRICELL, the world’s first virtual Cellular Bionics Research Centre at Imperial, where convergence-style research is a strategic priority.

We are currently advertising 5 new positions for entry October 2018:

1. Engineering biointerfaces between synthetic and biological cells
2. Development of next-generation Bio-Printing
3. Functionally optimized biofilms for building façades and architecture
4. Organelle breeding for artificial cells
5. Cells and organelles as embedded biomodules in artificial cells