Dr Yuval Elani is a UKRI Future Leaders Fellow and Lecturer (Asst. Professor) at Imperial Chemical Engineering. He leads the Bioinspired Engineering Group which consists of 20 PDRAs and PhD students. Yuval is an expert in synthetic biology, bio-membrane engineering, opto- / microfluidics, and molecular bioengineering.

Since completing his PhD in 2015 Yuval has secured > £3.6M as PI to conduct both blue-skies and applied research and has set up multiple collaborations with clinicians and industry (including AstraZeneca, Syngenta and GSK Vaccines). He has won multiple prizes and medals, including the Roscoe Medal, Rita and John Cornforth Medal, IC President’s Medal, and the RSC Felix Franks Medal for Biotechnology.

Yuval’s research is focussed on answering the following question: Can we construct artificial cells – entities that mimic the architectures, processes, and behaviours of biological cells - from scratch?

Our ambition is to usher in a new era of biodesign, where synthetic cells can be engineered from the bottom up for bespoke applications: designer micromachines that can be used to deliver drugs, manufacture chemicals, generate their own energy, produce novel materials, and act as environmental sensors. It will allow us to not only mimic biology, but to surpass it: incorporating wholly synthetic building blocks, of the sort that biology cannot access, will give engineered lifeforms new capabilities. By blurring the boundaries between living and non-living matter, Yuval’s group use artificial cells (i) as models to shed light on universal biological phenomena in simplified and highly controlled settings and (ii) as micromachines that perform biotechnologically useful functions in a suite of industrial and clinical applications.

Prior to joining Imperial, Yuval was at Cambridge University where he studied Natural Sciences. Yuval was recently honoured by the World Economic Forum, who selected him to be part of their Young Scientist Community (50 under 40 worldwide), and he sits on the EPSRC Early Career Forum for Engineering.