Biography: Thomas E. Gorochowski is a Professor of Biological Engineering in the School of Biological Sciences at the University of Bristol and currently holds a Royal Society University Research Fellowship. Coming from a background in computer science, he has since transitioned into the area of bioengineering, working across industry as a Marie Curie Fellow at DSM in the Netherlands and academia as part of the Synthetic Biology Centre at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in the USA. In 2016, he founded the Biocompute Lab at the University of Bristol (www.biocomputelab.org), which aims to better understand the computational architecture of biological systems to enable the more rational reprogramming of biology. He currently leads the national UKRI CYBER Engineering Biology Mission Award to help de-risk environmental applications of synthetic biology and is the Bristol lead for the EPSRC EEBio Programme Grant that aims to improve the robustness of synthetic biology through the integration of control engineering approaches.

MultimodalAI'25 Keynote Title: Data-centric approaches to biological design and engineering.

MultimodalAI'25 Keynote Abstract: High-throughput multi-modal experiments are revolutionising our understanding of biological complexity and offer a rich foundation on which to establish data-centric and mechanistic models of living cells. In this talk, I will present some of the sequencing methodologies my group has been developing to aid in the reprogramming of cells, providing broad and detailed information about diverse cellular processes and some of the insights this type of data has provided. I will also discuss some of the major challenges associated with the design of these experiments, showing how simulation can help; the chlleneges of working with heterogeneous data for biological design; and our efforts to to improve data interoperability and safety across the field of engineering biology.