Rate My Professor Francesca Ceroni

Francesca Ceroni is Associate Professor in Cell Engineering in the Department of Chemical Engineering at Imperial College London. She earned a degree in Pharmaceutical Biotechnologies from the University of Bologna, Italy, in 2007, followed by a PhD in Bioengineering from Imperial College London in 2012, where her research characterized genetic circuits in mammalian cells under the supervision of Professor Gyorgy Csics. During her doctoral studies, she visited the Microsoft Research-University of Trento Centre for Computational and Systems Biology. Ceroni then pursued postdoctoral research at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology's Synthetic Biology Center in Professor Ron Weiss's laboratory, developing synthetic gene circuits for cell-to-cell communication in mammalian cells. She joined Imperial College London as Lecturer in the Department of Bioengineering in 2016, transferring to the Department of Chemical Engineering in 2018. From 2016 to 2021, she held the Imperial College Junior Research Fellowship and serves on the Centre for Synthetic Biology Executive Committee. In 2025, she was promoted to Associate Professor.

The Ceroni lab employs engineering biology principles to engineer mammalian cells, designing genetic circuits to comprehend and manipulate complex cellular behaviors for biomanufacturing, bioprocessing, and cell therapy applications. Her research addresses synthetic biology challenges, including gene expression burden and resource competition, to enable robust genetic construct performance. Notable publications include 'Characterization and mitigation of gene expression burden in mammalian cells' (Nature Methods, 2020), 'Resource-aware construct design in mammalian cells' (Nature Communications, 2023), 'Design of an intracellular aptamer-based fluorescent sensor for visualising natural gene silencing' (Trends in Biotechnology, 2025), and 'Genetically programmed synthetic cells for thermo-responsive release of biologics' (Nature Chemical Biology, 2024). With over 2,100 citations, her contributions have advanced biotechnologies and interdisciplinary collaborations. She contributes to teaching and supervises projects in alternative protein production and cell metabolism rewiring.