Scientific Projects
Biotech, AI, and robotics for planetary health
current research
PhD Research — Adaptive Laboratory Evolution
ALE enables microbes to access phenotypes inaccessible by rational design alone. Working on new methods to speed up adaptive evolution and push the boundaries of microbial fitness, supervised by Associate Professor Harrison Steel at the University of Oxford.
Steel Lab →PhD Research — AI-driven Lab Automation
How can we pair active learning with laboratory automation to optimise biomanufacturing with minimal experimental data? Developing new methods to embed active learning and LLMs into automated workflows to optimise bioprocesses, starting with protein expression. Supervised by Associate Professor Jean-Baptiste Lugagne.
Lugagne Lab →previous projects
2026
Honours Project — Mining Metagenomic Data for Industrially Relevant Enzymes
In the lab of Professor Colin Jackson at the ARC Centre of Excellence in Synthetic Biology, I built a pipeline to analyse public sequencing data to characterise enzyme diversity in nature and identify new enzymes for biotechnology applications. Used sequence similarity networks, phylogenetic analysis, and high-throughput screening. First applied this to GH18 chitinases and solved the structure of two chitinase enzymes.
Jackson Lab →ANU iGEM 2024: Tackling Coral Bleaching using SynBio
CORA — an ROS-detoxifying catalase system expressed in coral probiotics to limit future bleaching events under heat stress.
Project wiki →ANU iGEM 2023: Virumediation
A modular bacteriophage-based bioaccumulation platform for remediation of heavy metals using encapsulin-localised metal-binding proteins delivered into native soil bacteria.
Project wiki →In silico Design of Anti-CD Nanobodies — Undergraduate Research Project
In the lab of Professor Thomas Huber, designed and expressed nanobodies targeting cell surface receptors.
Huber Lab →ANU Australasian SynBio Challenge 2022: Fluorescent Nanobody Toolkit
A modular plug-and-play cloning platform to express nanobodies in bacterial and plant expression systems, reducing the cost and complexity of nanobody production.
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