Leonardo Rios earned his Chemical Engineering MEng and Biotechnology MSc degree at the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM) and the Mexican Institute of Petroleum.

This led him to pursue his PhD in the Biochemical Engineering Department at UCL under supervision of Professor Gary J. Lye where he worked in microscale automated tools to design, model and optimise de novo pathways, specifically working with transaminases, transketolases and mono amino oxidases.

Leonardo then won a prestigious postdoctoral fellowship from the University of California Berkeley to perform research study at the Keasling Lab in the Joint BioEnergy Institute in the microbial synthetic biology field.

Leonardo was awarded a lectureship in 2017 at the Engineering School of the University of Edinburgh where he leads his research group at the Institute for Bioengineering.

His research focuses in the interphase of biochemical engineering and Synthetic Biology. He is applying synthetic biology tools to engineer microbial cell factories to produce high value products like biofuels, biomaterials and pharmaceuticals. He is also developing novel continuous flow bioreactors to host the engineered cells, as well as engineering the microbial cell factories to be suitable for continuous flow bioprocesses.

He is also very interested in developing new cheaper bioprocesses for biologics production, which could be applied in countries from Latin-American where he co-founded the startup Artes Genomicas SA de CV, which is looking to enable a wider access of expensive biologics to the underprivileged sector while promoting local production.

Leonardo is also very interested in marine synthetic biology, looking to discover novel natural products, enzymes of pathways from corals, as well as g zooplankton Synbio.

Leonardo is also the co-founder of Marizca LTD and Logikopt SA de CV.

Academic Qualifications

• Research Fellow in Synthetic Biology, University of California Berkeley, Joint Bioenergy Institute, California, USA
• Postdoc in Microscale Automated Bioprocesses, University College London, Biochemical Engineering, London, UK
• PhD Biochemical Engineering, University College London, Biochemical Engineering, London, UK, Thesis title: Microscale evaluation of de novo engineered whole cell biocatalysts Supervisors: Prof. G. J. Lye, Prof. and Dr F. Baganz
• MSc Petroleum Biotechnology, National Mexican Institute of Petroleum, Department of Biotechnology, Mexico
• BEng Chemical Engineering, National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM), Faculty of Chemistry, Mexico

Awards and Honors

• (2016) UC Berkeley Monarch Award for best postdoctoral fellowship (2500 $ award)
• (2008) Award of CONACYT scholarship, PhD at UCL, UK
• (2008)Award from Mexican Council scholarship for best research projects, PhD at UCL, UK
• (2010) Award for best poster. IChemE Bioprocessing Meeting, Cambridge, UK, 13-14 April 2010.
• (2009) Award of Institute of Education Scholarship for inspiring Teachers
• (2005) Award of CONACYT scholarship, Msc, IMP, Mexico
• (2005)Award of IMP scholarship for academic excellence, Msc, IMP, Mexico
• (2005) Award for best social service research project, Bsc Chemical Engineering, UNAM, Mexico
• (2002, 2003 and 2004) Awards for academic excellence top 3 best students, Bsc Chemical Engineering, UNAM, Mexico

Research Interests

• Microbial synthetic biology
• De novo pathways for production of high value natural products
• Microbial Metabolic Engineering
• Pathway modelling
• Bioreactor design, scale-up, scale down, fermentation and downstream process
• Automated microscale tools
• Enzyme production and purification
• Continuous flow bioreactors
• Aquaculture
• Mamalian cells synthetic biology
• Mamlian cell culture and bioreactor optimization
• Biologics production and purification
• Marine synthetic biology

Research Publications

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