Special Lecture with Harrison Steel

Please join us this upcoming Monday for a special seminar with Harrison Steel from the University of Oxford. 

Abstract

In this research talk I will present my recent work on a range of problems at the interface of control theory and synthetic biology. This falls into three broad areas: First, the combination of tools from traditional control theory with limitations inherent in biological systems will be used to derive constraints that must be satisfied for biological circuits with design goals such as disturbance rejection. Second, novel biological feedback architectures (with applications in bio-sensing and noise regulation) are analyzed mathematically, and then implemented and characterized experimentally. Third, new experimental automation hardware with broad applications in biological circuit characterization, biofuel development, and evolutionary studies will be described. Overall the talk aims to highlight many exciting new directions for research in synthetic biology, and illustrate the utility of control-theoretical thinking for understanding and engineering such systems.