SOS Team Members

Hongfei Liu received a Master Degree in Bioengineering at Tampere University, Finland in March 2020. He joined the Self-organizing Systems Lab in August 2020.

His research is to develop droplet-based microfluidic tools to optimize the design of genetic circuits via high-throughput and reproducible methods. Currently, he aims to build artificial cell-like compartments that are compatible with cell-free expression systems for bottom-up synthetic biology. He is also interested in using machine learning approaches to predict the performance of circuits of interest.

He received the MSc degree in Bioengineering from Tampere University, Finland, in 2020. He minored in Biomedical Engineering and completed the Master's thesis: Static vs. dynamic dissolution and cellular compatibility tests of bioactive borosilicate glass scaffolds. He has another MSc degree in Microbiology from the Kunming University of Science and Technology, China.

The current work involves the single and double emulsion droplets produced by microfluidics, the subsequent formation of vesicles consisting of lipids and/or polymers, and the encapsulation of cell-free expression systems within those compartments. The cell-like structures work as micro-reactors for the screen and then modeling according to the fluorescent intensities, also can be modified to control the interactions with the environment and other artificial or natural cells by introducing pores or channels on the interfaces, which serves biosensors and communication networks.

Possible Student Projects you can find here .