Alfred Brown
Creating an epistemic shift in synthetic biology, with AI and automation.
PhD candidate · Imperial College London
Engineering E. coli
Live Sciences
Live Sciences is a working prototype of an open, live laboratory: every experiment automated, streamed and recorded in full, from the reagents to the raw sensor data. The premise is that changing how science is done changes what can be known: a complete, verifiable record changes how results are interpreted, and an open one changes how discoveries get made.
- Automation — open-source liquid handling and sensors log every step and the conditions around it.
- Verification — livestreaming and time-stamped logging keep the record accountable and unalterable once made.
- Interpretation — an AI layer makes the whole experiment legible, so anyone can question and build on it.
A way to trust a result without trusting the lab that produced it: verification built into the data by construction, from logged reagents to immutable raw data to network consensus.
This livestream questions what it means to do science, how people perceive the scientific process, and surfaces ways of thinking about doing science outside of the Overton window.
Watch the video ↗
AI co-scientist
I am AI-native. I run an AI co-scientist across my own research.
Self-writing lab notebook — daily logs and weekly digests generated from your working sessions.
Reading pipeline — reference manager and search feeds turned into structured, annotated notes.
Meeting capture — call transcripts filed, summarised and made searchable automatically.
Analysis on tap — generated code for growth curves, sequencing and metabolic modelling.
Bench vision — reading plates, gels and instrument outputs from a single photo.
Scheduled briefings — calendar and priorities pulled together each morning.
50Y · 5050
Went through the 5050 founder programme after helping launch 5050 UK as a Catalyst at Fifty Years. 5050 backs people building civilisationally important companies.
DeSci London
Ran monthly decentralised-science events and grew a 700+ community across academia, industry, policy, tech and finance. Delivered the DeSci London Conference in 2023 and 2024 at the Francis Crick Institute and Imperial College, leading teams of 20+ to put on events for 500+ people and raising over $80k.
SynBioBeta
Owned the sales function and grew it several-fold, and built out SynBioBeta's global network of students and startups. Ran the Introduction to Synthetic Biology course and moderated panels on decentralised science and bioeconomy policy, and curated events such as Blockchain Meets Bio.
OpenCell
Helped build an open-source laboratory IoT sensor system to capture the metadata that decides whether experiments reproduce, curated the GitHub org, and pitched it to investors and users. The reproducibility thread I chase now starts here.
Wet lab
- Cloning — BASIC & Golden Gate, plasmid prep
- CRISPR — MAD7 / Cas12a, lambda-red, Onyx library build
- Strain engineering — inducible overexpression, curing
- PCR & sequencing — colony PCR, Sanger, Nanopore
- Cytometry & growth assays — FACS, plate reader, turbidostat
- Liquid handling & HT screens — Opentrons, Media-BOT, DNA-BOT
Computational
- AI-native workflow across the research stack
- Flux balance analysis — COBRApy, iML1515, OptForce, AMN
- RNA-seq — STAR, featureCounts, pyDESeq2, GO enrichment (STRING)
- Growth-curve modelling — Gompertz / Zwietering, custom rate fitting
- Guide design — FlashFry, RNAfold, PAM-proofing, primer design
- Python — pandas, NumPy, SciPy, matplotlib, seaborn, scikit-learn
- Statistics — Welch's t, Mann–Whitney U, FDR, ICC, Bland–Altman
Founder & operations
- Event delivery — 6 conferences, 300–5,000 people
- Building and running communities
- Sales, BD, investor communication
Off the clock
- DJ — SoundCloud
- Endurance sport — Gold for Great Britain in Rowing, IronMan 70.3
- Surfing & cold-water swimming
- Python, web design, Figma, basic electronics
Papers
Books
Reinventing Discovery · Nielsen
Science since Babylon · de Solla Price
The Human Use of Human Beings · Wiener
The Nvidia Way · Kim
Born of This Land · Chung Ju-yung
Without a Doubt · Sarna
Read Write Own · Dixon
Entangled Life · Sheldrake
The Overstory · Powers
Playground · Powers
The Brothers Karamazov · Dostoevsky
One Hundred Years of Solitude · García Márquez