In our next post of our young PI series, I had the pleasure to interview Iro Tsipa, who will shortly start in her new role as as a Lecturer in Environmental Biotechnology at the University of Cyprus.

Kostas Vavitsas: You recently moved to Cyprus from the UK and you are going to start your own lab very soon. What are the most striking differences between the two research environments?

Iro Tsipa: In the UK, I was working in a world-leading institution, Imperial College London, and in a cutting-edge research centre, SynbiCITE. So, the research could run smoothly in terms of support in equipment and consumables, communicating ideas, being able to attend and participate in conferences.  In Cyprus, these are not for granted, I had to prioritize the tasks in the projects I participate in, as the budgets are much lower. I feel more responsible for the choices I make. This was quite challenging in the beginning but now I understand better the priorities of a lab and a project and it helped a lot to be prepared for my next job.

Kostas: Do you feel prepared to start your new role?

Iro: I’m very excited to start working as a PI, have my lab and contribute to realistic solutions for environmental bioremediation and bioprocessing. I feel prepared about that. It seems like a natural next step to my academic career. The main challenges are: (i) get funded to be able to have the necessary equipment and working environment, (ii) find young people who share the same passion for environmental biotechnology to make a strong team and (iii) make a multi-disciplinary network of partners and collaborators who appreciate science to share ideas and try to answer key scientific questions.

Kostas: What is the true potential of environmental biotechnology and synthetic biology? Any interesting application that came up recently or will be out soon?

Iro: Environmental sustainability is at the core of the challenges of synthetic biology community. Engineered microbes and synthetic microbial consortia can substantially assist in limiting CO2 levels, recovering phosphorus, bioremediating and biodegrading resistant and toxic compounds that natural strains cannot process (yet)… Plastics and micropollutants biodegradation assisted by engineered microbes is an interesting field of emerging concern, which has attracted attention in recent years. Further, bioprocessing is a bottleneck in synthetic biology. We recently submitted a paper with my academic mentor, Sakis Mantalaris, and close collaborator, Gizem Buldum, of a kinetic model of synthetic genetic circuits predicting product formation towards microbial cell factories bioprocessing. I hope that this project will provide a different point of view of mathematical modelling and process intensification in synthetic biology.

Kostas: What is the single most important piece of advice you would give to an early career researcher in synthetic biology?

Iro: I would say ‘follow your own path’, find what fascinates you the most based on your background and knowledge, do your own research in the literature and start building on. Also, perform a thorough research of which groups work on similar projects and try to be inspired. Research and science are based on team efforts which can result in a great individual result.

In August 2019, Argyro (Iro) Tsipa will start working as a Lecturer in Environmental Biotechnology in the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering and Nireas International Research Centre, at University of Cyprus.Currently, she has been a Senior Researcherin the Department of Environmental Science and Technologyat Cyprus University of Technology. She obtained a Diploma in Chemical Engineering from the National Technical University of Athens, an MSc in Chemical Engineering with Biotechnology from Imperial College London where she also got her PhD in Bioprocess Systems Engineering. Before her current appointment, she worked as a Research Associate at the UK’s National Innovation and Knowledge Centre for Synthetic Biology (SynbiCITE) and the London DNA Foundry. Iro is considered as an expert in transcriptomics and proteomics. She has been instrumental in developing an integrated experimental-modelling framework to design optimal bioprocesses with applications in Industrial and Environmental Biotechnology, and Synthetic Biology. She developed and is responsible for the molecular biology facility of her current lab and the OzoneBioPro project developing a hybrid ozonation-bioremediation treatment of drill cuttings of the drilling operations in Cyprus.