Laura E. Walls
PhD Student: Bioprocess Engineering
Email: L.e.walls@sms.ed.ac.uk
Laura focuses on the development of an industrially relevant, scalable bioprocess for the production of high value isoprenoids. Laura is using state of art high throughput microscale and mini-bioreactors to determine the effect of industrial scale conditions on the engineered cells early on in the design/build/test/learn cycle. Her project also involves the integrated modelling of the bioprocess and synthetic pathways to predict industrial scale productivity
Professional Experience
Postgraduate Researcher – University of Edinburgh – Institute for Bioengineering (August 2018 – Present)
Tutor and Lab Demonstrator – University of Edinburgh School of Engineering (September 2018 – Present)
Guest PhD Researcher – Technical University of Denmark – Fermentation Core, DTU Bioengineering (January 2020 – December 2020)
Guest MEng Researcher – National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM), Engineering Institute (February 2018 – April 2018)
Research Assistant – Newcastle University, School of Engineering (June 2017-July 2018)
Education
PhD Bioengineering – University of Edinburgh, Institute for Bioengineering (August 2018-present)
Chemical Engineering with Bioprocess Engineering MEng Hons – Newcastle University, School of Engineering (2014-2018)
Current Projects
A quality by design approach to Taxol biosynthetic pathway optimisation in S. cerevisiae cell factories
Mooving toward sustainable jet fuels: bioconversion of Spruce biomass into bisabolene using rumen bacteria and non-conventional yeast