About

Roger Rubio Sánchez, (Independent Research Fellow)

Originally from Mexico City, Roger completed his bachelor’s degree in Biotechnology Engineering at the Instituto Tecnológico y de Estudios Superiores de Monterrey (2015). In 2017 he moved to Cambridge, U.K. to pursue an MRes in Nanoscience and Nanotechnology as part of the Centre for Doctoral Training NanoDTC. Working in the group of Lorenzo Di Michele, he obtained a PhD in Physics from the Cavendish Laboratory (2021), followed by two postdoctoral appointments at Imperial College London (Department of Chemistry) and at the University of Cambridge (Department of Chemical Engineering and Biotechnology). Since 2023, he is a BBSRC Discovery Fellow and a Wolfson College Junior Research Fellow, hosted at the Department of Chemical Engineering and Biotechnology, University of Cambridge.

Research Supervision

Bashayr Khalifah, PhD student (2023 — Ongoing); Co-supervisor

Bashayr is a PhD student in Biotechnology at the Department of Chemical Engineering and Biotechnology. Her project, co-supervised with Lorenzo Di Michele and Pietro Cicuta, combines DNA nanotechnology and membrane biphysics for advanced cellular bio-engineering.

Sofia Benedetti, MRes project student (2024 — Ongoing); Supervisor

Sofia is doing an MRes rotation Midi project for her degree in the EPSRC CDT in Nanoscience and Nanotechnology (NanoDTC). Co-supervised with Lorenzo Di Michele and Ioanna Mela, her Midi project aims at using the tools of DNA nanotechnology for virus recognition and inhibition towards bottom-up synthetic immunity.

Lavonda Li, MEng project student (2023 — 2024); Co-supervisor

Lavonda did an MEng research project as part of her degree in Chemical Engineering and Biotechnology (Part IIB, CEB tripos). Her project, co-supervised with Lorenzo Di Michele, used the tools of amphiphilic DNA nantechnology to unravel design principles for lipid membrane bio-engineering and synthetic cell science.

Charles Seymour, MRes project student (2024); Co-supervisor

Charles did an MRes rotation mini project for his degree in the EPSRC CDT in Nanoscience and Nanotechnology (NanoDTC). Co-supervised with Lorenzo Di Michele and Rachel Evans, his mini project aimed at expanding the toolkit of amphiphilic DNA nanotechnology for lipid membrane bio-engineering in synthetic cell science.

Elita Peters, NanoFutures Scholar (2023); Co-supervisor

Elita is a Pharmacology BSc (Hons) undergraduate student at London Metropolitan University. Elita did a visiting NanoFutures Scholars internship, funded by the EPSRC CDT in Nanoscience and Nanotechnology (NanoDTC). During her summer internship, co-supervised with Lorenzo Di Michele, she worked on engineering a cation-responsive platform for lipid membrane re-modelling in synthetic cells.

Rowena Davies, MRes project student (2023); Daily supervisor

Rowena did an MRes rotation mini project during her degree in the EPSRC CDT in Nanoscience and Nanotechnology (NanoDTC). In the group of Lorenzo Di Michele, her mini project consisted in tailoring DNA nanostructure interactions for lipid membrane bio-engineering in synthetic cells.

Erin Holdsworth, MRes project student (2022 — 2023); Daiy supervisor

Erin did an MRes rotation mini project during her degree in the EPSRC CDT in Nanoscience and Nanotechnology (NanoDTC). In the group of Lorenzo Di Michele, her mini project consisted in expanding our toolkit to regulate membrane-hosted responses with stimuli-responsive DNA nanostructures.

Simone Eizagirre Barker, MRes project student (2020); Daily supervisor

Simone did an MRes rotation mini project as part of her degree in the EPSRC CDT in Nanoscience and Nanotechnology (NanoDTC). During her mini project, in the group of Lorenzo Di Michele, she worked on deepening our understanding of the interactions between amphiphilic DNA nanostructures and lipid membranes. Her work with us contributed to our publication on regulating the spatio-temporal organisation of membrane inclusions with DNA nano-devices (Nano Lett., 21(7), 2800 – 2808, 2021).