Dr. Mark Isalan

Biography

Mark Isalan has extensive experience in engineering biology, holding a Ph.D. in engineering zinc fingers that bind new DNA sequences from the MRC LMB at the University of Cambridge from 1996 to 2000. His Ph.D. work, supervised by Prof. Sir Aaron Klug, contributed significantly to the development of CompoZr zinc finger nucleases, which are commercially available through Sigma Aldrich and were a precursor to CRISPR technology. Following his doctoral studies, he served as a postdoctoral researcher from 2000 to 2002 at Gendaq Ltd in the UK, which is now part of Sangamo Biosciences in Richmond, California. From 2002 to 2006, Dr. Isalan was awarded the Wellcome Trust International Research Fellowship, conducting research on engineering artificial gene networks in Prof. Luis Serrano's group at EMBL in Heidelberg, Germany. He led the EMBL-CRG Systems Biology Unit in Barcelona from 2006 to 2013, specializing in synthetic gene network engineering. Since moving to Imperial College London in 2013, he has continued his research focus on protein gene network engineering, aiming to design biological systems that behave predictably and robustly, ultimately contributing to the development of new forms of gene therapy.

Research Interests

Experience