Short Bio

Dr Michael T. Barros is a Lecturer (Assistant Professor) in Engineering and AI in Medicine at the CSEE, University of Essex, UK. He directs the Unconventional Communications and Computing Laboratory, where his team investigates disruptive paradigms spanning from synthetic biological intelligence and biomedical technologies.

Dr Barros received his PhD (2016) in Computational Nanobioscience from South East Technological University, Ireland. Before joining Essex he held a Marie Skłodowska‑Curie Fellowship at Tampere University, Finland, and an Irish Research Council Post‑doctoral Fellowship at the Walton Institute, Ireland.

He has attracted substantial competitive research funding from the European Commission, BBSRC, Innovate UK and other agencies, and was awarded the 2020 CONNECT Prof Tom Brazil Excellence in Research Award. He also serves on the EPSRC & BBSRC Engineering Biology Peer‑Review Colleges.

With more than 100 peer‑reviewed publications (h‑index 22, >1,300 citations), his research sits at the interface of neuroengineering, biocomputing, multiscale biology and AI‑enabled health technologies. Dr Barros holds editorial appointments in leading IEEE and Frontiers journals and contributes to the Alan Turing Institute’s interdisciplinary activities on the organisational principles of living systems.