Dr Tom Ellis obtained a PhD in Pharmacology from the University of Cambridge under the supervision of Michael J. Waring in 2004.  His thesis examined a class of drugs that bind directly to DNA sequences, investigating their use as synthetic gene expression regulators that target critical promoter elements of genes.  Dr Ellis followed-up his PhD research until 2005 at a drug-discovery biotech where he set-up a biological screening unit and developed high-throughput assays to characterise the interactions between DNA-binding drugs and the promoters of genes known to play a key role in cancer.

Dr Ellis returned to academic research in 2005 to spend two years investigating synthetic biology at Boston University, USA.  Working in one of the founding groups of the field under the supervision of Jim Collins, Dr Ellis devised a synthesis-based library approach to engineering gene regulatory networks and was able to model and implement this method in nonlinear systems and with phenotypes relevant to biofuel and beer production.

In 2009 before joining Imperial College, Dr Ellis returned to the UK to research synthetic biology at the Institute of Biotechnology at University of Cambridge.  He helped supervise their world champion 2009 iGEM team "E.Chromi" while developing synthetic biology tools for mammalian cells and investigating the use of synthetic biology to protect cells in extreme environments.

For more information about my research and my lab, please visit the Ellis Lab webpage.

Research interests: Dr Ellis's main research interests are synthetic biology, genetic engineering, the function of DNA sequence, standards in biological engineering and extreme life and the origin of cells.