Team Members

Dr Annemette Kjeldsen

Annemette moved from Denmark to Scotland to obtain an MChem in Medicinal and Biological Chemistry at the University of Edinburgh. After this she spent a few years in industrial biotech with Ingenza Ltd. as part of a multidisciplinary team working towards developing biosynthetic routes. In 2016 she started an IBioIC-sponsored PhD with Professor John Christie at the University of Glasgow. Her PhD focused on developing and characterising the fluorescent protein iLOV and its derivatives, and the applications of this as a biosensor reporter and protein marker in an industrial setting. Annemette joined the Wallace group in 2021 to work on microbial pathway engineering and whole-cell biotransformations towards the sustainable production of small molecules. She also is the lab-manager of the Wallace lab.

When not keeping the lab in line, she enjoys time with her family and tending to her oversized garden in the countryside, bringing in apples for everyone to bake crumbles. Because no-one can pronounce all the vowels in her name, she usually goes by AM.

Dr Marcos Valenzuela Ortega

Marcos obtained a BSc in Biotechnology from the Universitat Autonòma de Barcelona. He moved to Scotland in 2014 to work in Ingenza Ltd, to engineer new metabolic pathways in bacteria. In 2016, Marcos joined the University of Edinburgh to pursue a PhD in the lab of Professor Chris French, funded by EastBio and aiming at engineering microbes to break down cellulose. After completing his PhD, he worked in the lab of Prof. Louise Horsfall to develop Synbio tools for a non-model bacterium. Marcos joined the Wallace lab in November 2021 to work in an industrial collaboration seeking the sustainable generation of an industrial feedstock chemical.

Dr Thomas Thorpe

Tom joined the Wallace Lab in early 2022 as a PDRA and is exploring the intracellular localisation of biocompatible chemical catalysts to expand the number of small molecules that can be produced using microbes. Previously he worked as a Research Scientist at an industrial biotechnology company, Ingenza, before perusing an iCASE PhD in Chemistry and PDRA under the supervision of Prof. Nicholas Turner at the University of Manchester where he identified and engineered new biocatalysts for the asymmetric synthesis of pharmaceuticals. My research interest covers biocatalysis, chemo-enzymatic synthesis, and biocompatible chemistry with an overall focus on application of biology for sustainable industrial chemical production. He is originally from the West Country and enjoys coffee, live music, and hiking.

Dr John Steele

John joined the Wallace group in early 2023 to develop sustainable routes to the commodity chemical adipic acid using renewable feedstocks. His PhD research to determine the crystal structure and biochemical regulation of plant immune receptors was carried out at the John Innes Centre, where he subsequently took a postdoctoral position using plants to produce virus-like particles for fundamental biology and biotechnology applications. Having worked as a postdoctoral researcher at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory in California, investigating the biochemistry of bacterial microcompartments, John returned to the UK in 2020. After two years working in industry as a process development scientist and senior scientist in assay development, John decided to return to academia and pursue research aimed at reducing the impact society has on the environment.

Outside of the lab John can be found cooking to increasingly niche heavy metal subgenres or hiking the British countryside.

Dr Ben Astles

Ben completed his undergraduate degree at the University of Edinburgh, studying Biological Sciences with Honours in Biotechnology. He stayed in Edinburgh for his PhD in the Rosser Lab, where he collaborated with Unilever to discover new metalloproteases for detergent applications. He is now working in the Wallace lab on improving the production of adipic acid from guaiacol and PET.

Outside of the lab, Ben enjoys hiking (weather permitting), reading fantasy and sci-fi and rewatching The Wire. 

Dr Mirren White

An Edinburgh native, Mirren gained a BSc (Hons) in Genetics from the University of Glasgow in 2014. An MSc in Science Communication and Public Engagement from the University of Edinburgh followed in 2015, after which she worked in the sector for the next three years. Having always been interested in the practical applications of biology, she undertook an MSc in Synthetic Biology and Biotechnology at Edinburgh, graduating with Distinction in 2019. As part of the MSc, she took part in the 2019 iGEM competition, working on azo dye detection and bioremediation, for which the team was awarded a Silver Medal. She joined the lab in 2020 as a research assistant working on metabolic engineering of bacteria to produce high-value products, before joining the IBioIC PhD programme in October 2020 to work on the sustainable production of industrial chemicals using a combination of engineered bacterial metabolism and chemical catalysis in collaboration with MiAlgae. Mirren passed her viva in April 2025 and have stayed with the Wallace lab as a PDRA.

Dr Wylan Wong

Louis Marlow

Louis is a current PhD researcher in the Wallace lab. He joined in 2022 to complete his doctoral research in collaboration with the UK Government Defence Science and Technology Laboratory (Dstl), focussing on interfacing biocompatible chemistry with synthetic biology for green chemical transformations.

Louis grew up in London and first moved north in 2012 to study at the University of Aberdeen for his BSc in Biochemistry. He moved on to complete a collaborative MSc in Industrial Biotechnology including a placement at Edinburgh based biotech, Ingenza. After his studies Louis was hired and worked as a molecular biologist at Ingenza for four years delivering biological routes to produce high-value chemicals and proteins for customers across sectors. He specialised in the design and implementation of high-throughput and automated strain engineering strategies and enjoys engineering a variety of prokaryotic and eukaryotic microbes including E. coli, P. putida, B. subtilis, R. sphaeroides, S. Cerevisiae, P. pastoris and Y. lipolytica. Louis was the recent president of the European Synthetic Biology Society (EUSynBioS) and now sits on their Steering Committee.  

Outside of the lab he enjoys fermenting food and drink in the kitchen including batches of kimchi, sauerkraut and particularly fizzy ginger beer.

Gautham Suresh

Gautham moved to the UK to work toward a BSc in Cellular and Molecular Biology at Newcastle University in 2016. To further pursue his interest in microbial biotechnology, Gautham studied in the Santini lab at UCL as an MRes student. Gautham joined the Wallace lab in 2021 as a Darwin Trust funded PhD student, aiming to improve the tolerance of microorganisms to key platform chemical products utilising stress responses. 

Outside the lab, Gautham is often found playing board games and petting stray cats. His mother tongue is a South Indian language named Malayalam – the only language with a palindromic name!

Ben Royer

I’m Ben, and I’m passionate about the applications of biology to solve environmental problems and positively impact society. I grew up in France and moved to the UK in 2017 to complete a BSc in Biotechnology at the University of Surrey. I moved to Scotland for a MSc in Synthetic Biology and Biotechnology at the University of Edinburgh, and begun my PhD in the Wallace lab in 2022.

During my previous degrees I have worked on the degradation of recalcitrant pollutants using microbial fuel cells in Dr Avignone-Rossa’s lab, as well as investigated the establishment of heterologous secretory systems in Prof Horsfall’s lab. I am now working on the microbial upcycling of plastic waste in the Wallace lab, funded by the IBioIC PhD programme in collaboration with Impact Solutions.

Outside of the lab I like to be active and do a mix of trail running, hiking, cycling, climbing… trying to explore Scotland little by little.

Charles Wackwitz

Charles is a Dutch national born and raised in Brussels, Belgium. He first moved to the UK in 2015 to study BSc Biotechnology at University College London before moving back to Brussels to work for AstraZeneca. After a brief stint at a med-tech startup in New York City, Charles moved to Edinburgh to complete his MSc in Synthetic Biology and Biotechnology where he also competed in the iGEM and iDEC teams. He then worked as a research assistant with Dr Joanna Sadler to produce hydroquinone from cellulosic waste, before finally joining the Wallace lab in 2022 as a PhD student funded by Lubrizol. His research focuses on the bio-production of adipic acid from lignin waste. 

He enjoys tennis, road trips and noisy music.

Louis Simpson Redmond

Louis moved to Edinburgh in 2018 from his home in Liverpool to do a BSc in Biological Sciences (having eventually settled on Biotechnology as an honours in his final year) and hasn't found a way to escape yet. In the meantime, he also did an MSc in Synthetic Biology and Biotechnology, doing his Master's project in the Horsfall Lab up the corridor. 

He joined the Wallace Lab in 2023 to do an industrially-sponsored PhD project in association with De Monchy Aromatics. In this project, Louis aims to synthesize high-value industrial compounds biologically, making use of waste feedstocks.

In his free time, Louis enjoys playing videogames, cooking and collecting interesting spirits and liqueurs to make cocktails with. Also, his name isn't Louis.

Kitty Clouston

Kitty moved from Bangalore (one of the smaller Indian cities) to London (about half as populated) in 2016, to study Biochemistry at Imperial College. She did a year in industry at GSK, working on enzyme engineering and biocatalysis, which sparked an interest in using biology to make industrial processes more sustainable. She joined Alison Smith’s lab in Cambridge for a research MPhil, engineering microalgae to produce high-value compounds, and stayed on as a technician, tinkering with algal chloroplasts in various ways. Returning to her biochemistry roots, Kitty joined the Wallace lab for an EASTBIO-funded PhD in 2023, working on biocompatible chemistry using microbial hydrogen. 

Outside the lab, Kitty can be found in charity shops, old churches, pubs and at protests around Edinburgh, and every so often in mosh pits in Glasgow. And no, Kitty isn’t short for anything.

Pierce Bozeat

Pierce is a PhD researcher working on sustainable biocompatible chemistry reactions. He joined in 2024 on a DSTL-funded PhD with the aim of investigating greener alternative synthesis pathways for industrially relevant chemicals using bacteria such as E. coli as platforms. Pierce grew up in Dorset, and moved to the University of St. Andrews to do a BSc in Biology, before moving to London to complete an MRes in Synthetic Biology, where he worked on characterising a community of plastic-degrading bacteria isolated from mealworms for lab use. After his MRes, Pierce worked at CyanoCapture, a startup focusing on using cyanobacteria to strip carbon dioxide from exhaust streams in order to tackle the ever-growing need for carbon capture as the climate crisis develops. His main focus was on strain engineering, using tools such as CRISPR and the Cre-Lox system to create a range of marker-free GM strains for the company. After a year and a half with the company, Pierce joined the Wallace lab to continue his goal of developing sustainable biological solutions for pressing ecological issues. Outside of the lab, Pierce enjoys wild camping, reading and woodworking - preferably all at the same time

Ethan Gates

Originally from the Appalachian Mountains in the United States, Ethan earned a BSc in Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering from North Carolina State University. After graduating he worked as a research assistant in Dr Nathan Crook’s lab, gaining a keen interest in the emerging field of plastic biodegradation culminating in the publication of a  comprehensive review on known plastic metabolisms. His current research in the Wallace lab focuses on converting PET waste to various pharmaceuticals. Outside of work, he enjoys producing electronic music, feeding birds with his girlfriend, and exploring the Scottish countryside.

Arun Cook