Ben Gascoyne

I graduated from the University of Oxford with an integrated Masters in Biology. My Masters research was on engineering agriculturally relevant non nitrogen-fixing bacteria to fix nitrogen, which solidified my interest in engineering and synthetic biology.

I joined the Earlham Institute in September 2026 as a Pre-Doctoral intern in plant synthetic biology under Will Shaw. My project involves the use of AI to design synthetic plant promoters that drive specific and complex expression patterns, and testing them using luciferase reporter assays. This project aims to expand the tools available for plant engineering.

I plan to use the experience gained from my internship in plant synthetic biology to land a PhD in plant engineering or synthetic biology with an agriculturally relevant goal.