Disease and treatment response do not arise from molecules alone. They emerge from how signals are transmitted, integrated and stored across interacting cells and networks, and from how those dynamics change with biological state, context and history.
Precision medicine therefore requires models that predict how living systems transform drugs, stimuli and environmental changes into functional responses. We combine mechanistic modelling, biofabrication, electrophysiology and adaptive interfaces to make this transformation measurable and predictable, and to test how it can be controlled across scales.
Discover how biology processes information. Engineer the living substrate. Couple it to digital models and interfaces.
No single discipline can connect molecular mechanism to functional prediction. Bioconvergence connects the full causal chain: mechanistic models identify candidate principles; biofabrication controls cellular organisation; electrophysiology measures and perturbs network dynamics; and AI and biological digital twins connect experimental observations with prediction and control.
We determine how calcium signalling, neuron–astrocyte interactions, neuronal activity and network topology represent, transmit and transform information. This reveals how computation emerges across molecular, cellular and network scales, and how disease disrupts it.
Disease can be understood as disrupted information processing; treatment as controlled biological response; and living networks as a new substrate for adaptive computation.
Demyelination, inflammatory signalling, seizures and altered neuron–astrocyte organisation change how neural systems transmit and transform information. Quantifying these changes creates mechanistic routes towards better disease models, biomarkers and intervention targets.
Mechanistic models, cell culture, MEA electrophysiology, biofabrication and biological digital twins connect biological state with measurable response. The objective is to predict how drugs, stimulation and network structure change function before an intervention is selected.
Network-aware stimulation and bioelectronic interfaces could make neural intervention more selective. Our work treats spatial targeting, signal integrity, controllability and cybersecurity as coupled requirements for systems that measure or perturb living neural activity.
Living networks adapt, self-organise and couple directly to biology. We test whether these properties can support reproducible computation where autonomy, biological integration or constrained energy use matters, while measuring rather than assuming performance and energy advantages.
Barros has secured more than €2 million equivalent as Principal Investigator or project director across European, UK and national programmes.
| Role | Project | Funder | Years | Value |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Principal Investigator | Biological Deep Reservoirs: Modular Neuronal Organoids for Multi-Variable Chaotic Forecasting in Space | ESA ARIADNA | 2026–2027 | €45,000 |
| Essex Principal Investigator and Technical Coordinator | BRAINET – Networked Distributed Neural Interfaces for Interference-Based Brain Stimulation | Horizon Europe MSCA Doctoral Network | 2026–2030 | €697,476 to Essex |
| Essex Principal Investigator | QUESTING – Designing, Managing and Debugging Quantum Networks | Horizon Europe MSCA Doctoral Network | 2025–2029 | €348,738 to Essex |
| Co-Investigator | AI-enabled biomarker discovery engine using multi-modal data | Innovate UK KTP with Chronomics | 2025–2028 | £288,858 |
| Role | Project | Funder | Years | Value |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Co-Investigator | ROS Signaling in Plants: Are We Missing a Fundamental Pathway? | UKRI BBSRC Pioneer Award | 2024–2026 | £182,000 award; approximately £160,000 Essex share |
| Principal Investigator | Bioinspired Computational Scaffold Design Towards Improved Neural 3D Cultures | UKRI BBSRC IAA Engagement Award | 2024 | £22,394 |
| Principal Investigator | 3D Bioprinting Technology for New Market Solutions in the UK | Innovate UK KTP with iMakr Group | 2023–2025 | £241,119 award; £201,792 Essex share |
| Principal Investigator | STOICISM – Stochastic Communication Inside Cortical Microcolumns | Horizon 2020 Marie Skłodowska-Curie Individual Fellowship | 2019–2022 | €202,681 |
| Co-Investigator | GLADIATOR – Next-generation Theranostics with Autonomous Externally Controllable Nanonetworks | Horizon 2020 FET | 2018–2022 | €421,875 institutional share |
| Principal Investigator | CDaaS – Clinical Data as a Service | Enterprise Ireland Commercialisation Fund | 2018–2019 | €299,000 |
| Principal Investigator | Control Theory in Molecular Communication for Alzheimer's Treatment | Irish Research Council Postdoctoral Fellowship | 2016–2018 | €92,000 |
| Principal Investigator | Internet of Nano Things for Theranostics of Brain Glioblastomas | Institutional doctoral funding | 2019–2023 | €74,000 |
Michael Barros founded the Unconventional Communications and Computing Laboratory at the University of Essex in 2022. UC² brings together biocomputing, molecular communication, neural interfaces and biofabrication.
The laboratory combines computational modelling with cell culture, MEA electrophysiology and bioprinting. Its core team currently comprises three researchers, supported by technical and collaborative expertise across engineering and biological sciences.
At Essex, he founded the UC² Laboratory and established cell-culture capability within a computer science and engineering department. He secured more than £200,000 of infrastructure, including an Axion MEA system, bioprinting, incubation, centrifugation, refrigeration and supporting culture equipment.
He has advised six PhD researchers, 38 MSc researchers, 31 undergraduate researchers and five visiting researchers. He co-leads the Alan Turing Institute Special Interest Group on Learning the Organisational Principles of Living Systems and contributes to research assessment through the EPSRC Peer Review College, EPSRC fellowship panels and the BBSRC Technology Missions Fund Engineering Biology panel.
Selected coverage of our work on molecular communication, neurological disease, brain cancer and networked biological systems.
We collaborate across computational neuroscience, engineering biology, biofabrication, electrophysiology, neural interfaces and communication engineering. Current programmes connect academic and industrial partners across the UK and Europe.
UC² Laboratory · Google Scholar · LinkedIn · University of Essex profile
