Rate My Professor Natalio Krasnogor

Professor Natalio Krasnogor is Professor of Computing Science (Synthetic Biology) in the School of Computing at Newcastle University. He holds the Royal Academy of Engineering Chair in Emerging Technologies for his project Engineering Data Structure Organoids, which explores scaling up data storage in living cells using DNA and RNA for in vivo data structure organoids. Previously at the University of Nottingham School of Computer Science, he joined Newcastle University in September 2013. Krasnogor directs the Interdisciplinary Computing and Complex BioSystems (ICOS) Research Group and the Centre for Synthetic Biology and the Bioeconomy. He is Principal Investigator on major grants including the EPSRC programme grant Portabolomics, H2020 project DESTINATION, and Innovate UK KTP on nucleic acids nanotechnology for drug delivery. He previously held an EPSRC Leadership Fellowship in Synthetic Biology. His research focuses at the interface of computing science and natural sciences, encompassing machine intelligence techniques such as optimisation, data mining, big data, and evolutionary learning; complex systems; unconventional computing including biocomputing; bioinformatics; systems biology; and synthetic biology. Notable contributions include developing DNA-based data structures, such as a last-in first-out stack implemented in DNA published in Nature Communications in 2021, and work on co-transcriptional folding of RNA origami and reverse engineering of DNA origami designs.

Krasnogor's influence spans pioneering synthetic biology applications, including portable metabolomics platforms, molecular computing, and engineering biology for environmental solutions. Key publications include 'Scaling-up Engineering Biology for Enhanced Environmental Solutions' (2024), 'Light-up split Broccoli aptamer as a versatile tool for RNA assembly monitoring' (2023), 'NIHBA: a network interdiction approach for metabolic engineering design' in Bioinformatics (2020), and 'For the sake of the Bioeconomy: define what a Synthetic Biology Chassis is!' in New Biotechnology (2021). He is affiliated with the Centre for Bacterial Cell Biology and contributes to version control systems for strain engineering and CRISPR-aided counterselection methods. His work advances commercialisation of synthetic biology technologies and addresses their societal implications.