
Professor Lucia Marucci
BSc, MSc, PhD
Expertise
Lucia's research aims at quantitively understanding and directly engineering cell functions, with applications spanning biotechnology and healthcare.
Current positions
Professor of Systems and Engineering Biology
School of Engineering Mathematics and Technology
Contact
Press and media
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Biography
After completing her studies in Mathematics, Lucia started a PhD in Automatic Engineering, focused on the design of synthetic gene network (University of Naples, Italy, PhD award 2010). She then moved to the Centre for Genomic Regulation (Barcelona, Spain) where she was awarded an EMBO Long term fellowship to study gene expression dynamics in pluripotent stem cells.
Lucia moved to Bristol in 2013, where she is currently an Associate Professor in Systems and Synthetic Biology, and an Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC) Fellow. She co-directs the Bristol BioDesign Institute, a specialised research institute in Synthetic Biology.
Research interests
Projects and supervisions
Research projects
EEBio: Efficient Engineering and Control of Predictable and Reliable Biosystems
Principal Investigator
Managing organisational unit
School of Engineering Mathematics and TechnologyDates
01/03/2024 to 28/02/2030
AI In Bioscience Network Proposal
Principal Investigator
Managing organisational unit
School of Engineering Mathematics and TechnologyDates
01/08/2023 to 31/07/2028
21ENGBIO Reprogramming bacterial cells using whole-cell models
Principal Investigator
Managing organisational unit
Department of Engineering MathematicsDates
15/02/2023 to 14/02/2024
21ENGBIO Reprogramming bacterial cells using whole-cell models
Principal Investigator
Managing organisational unit
School of Engineering Mathematics and TechnologyDates
15/02/2023 to 14/02/2024
8032 BrisEngBio Pilot Project: Integrating whole-cell models into DBTL cycles: theory to proof-of-concept
Principal Investigator
Managing organisational unit
Department of Engineering MathematicsDates
01/08/2022 to 31/01/2024
Thesis supervisions
Tools and applications of cybergenetics control of living cells
Supervisors
Development and validation of synthetically engineered microbial consortia
Supervisors
Genome Design
Supervisors
Using and improving whole-cell models to investigate bacterial minimal genomes
Supervisors
Can we do continuation on living cells?
Supervisors
Minimal Genome Design and Engineering
Supervisors
A Viral Approach to Translatome Profiling of CA1 Neurons During Associative Recognition Memory Formation
Supervisors
Modelling, control and design of autonomous artificial avatars in human motor coordination task
Supervisors
Investigating the effect of amyloid-beta on hippocampal dynamics in Alzheimer's disease
Supervisors
Identifying and modelling decision making and collective behaviour in multi-agent human and artificial systems
Supervisors
Publications
Recent publications
27/01/2025In silico modelling of organ-on-a-chip devices
Frontiers in Bioengineering and Biotechnology
FluxGAT: Integrating Flux Sampling with Graph Neural Networks for Unbiased Gene Essentiality Classification
Data hazards in synthetic biology
Synthetic Biology
Bridging the gap between mechanistic biological models and machine learning surrogates
PLoS Computational Biology
In-silico and in-vitro morphometric analysis of intestinal organoids
PLoS Computational Biology
Teaching
Lucia has been teaching several units at both the undergraduate and postgraduate levels, including Mathematical Modelling in Physiology and Medicine (a specialised unit covering Systems and Synthetic Biology topics), Engineering Mathematics 1 (a core mathematics unit taught to all engineers), Mathematical and Data Modelling (a project-based unit). She has been teaching within various national and international PhD programs (e.g. EPSRC-funded Synthetic Biology CDT, Oxford).