Olivier Borkowski earned his PhD in 2013, studying the relationship between growth rate and protein production in bacteria through a systems biology approach, under the supervision of Dr. S. Aymerich and Dr. V. Fromion. He then built, across leading international labs, a skill set at the interface of synthetic biology, cell-free systems, and machine learning: coupling cell physiology and protein production using molecular logic gates (Stanford University, USA, with Prof. D. Endy), developing cell-free protein production methods (Imperial College London, UK, with Prof. T. Ellis), combining cell-free systems with machine learning to maximize protein production (Genopole, Evry, France, with Prof. J.-L. Faulon), and building automation tools for synthetic circuit design (Institut Pasteur, France, with Dr. G. Batt). From his PhD to his present research, Olivier Borkowski’s work has centered on the relationship between protein production and cell growth, driven by the optimization of resource allocation.
In 2021, he was appointed INRAE Researcher at Micalis, where he now applies his skill set to the engineering of cell-free systems to deepen our understanding of bacterial physiology, from model organisms to non-model species of the human gut microbiota.