Hosted by the School of Cellular and Molecular Medicine
Lucia's research is focused on developing quantitative tools to understand cell dynamics and engineering-inspired methodologies for controlling living system functions, with the final aim to both disentangle and reprogram the complexity governing life.
Her approach combines tools from different disciplines: control engineering, systems and synthetic biology, and computer science.
The interdisciplinary research group Lucia leads works on 3 main research areas:
1. synthesis of controllers which can robustly engineer novel cellular functions while expanding the repertoire of redesigned phenotypes across organisms;
2. implementation of pipelines that can support whole-cell design and make synthetic biology design-build-test-learn cycles more predictable and efficient;
3. understanding of the endogenous processes which regulate higher organism gene expression in space and time for superior, nature-inspired design aims.