Ben Shirt-Ediss

From September 2023 I am a postdoctoral researcher at Donostia International Physics Centre (San Sebastian, Spain) conducting origins of life research; namely minimal agency and its evolution in simulated protocell systems.

Previously, I was a senior postdoctoral researcher at Newcastle University UK, working in computational DNA/RNA nanotechnology.

New paper!

Reverse Engineering DNA Origami Nanostructure Designs from Raw Scaffold and Staple Sequence Lists

Shirt-Ediss, B. et al. Comput. Struct. Biotechnol. J. 21, 3615–3626 (2023).

Link: doi:10.1016/j.csbj.2023.07.011

Recent paper

A Last-In First-Out Stack Data Structure Implemented in DNA

Lopiccolo, A., Shirt-Ediss, B. et al. Nature Communications 12, 4861 (2021).

Link: doi:10.1038/s41467-021-25023-6

Publications on Google Scholar

My doctoral thesis (2016, defended in San Sebastian, Spain) was centred on the origins of cellular life problem, where I argued that the emergence of cellular life should be tackled from the view point of the emergence of autonomous protocell systems.

My areas of scientific interest are:

Theory and Computational Modelling of Non-linear Chemical Systems (including Protocells, DNA Computing and DNA Nanotechnology)
Origins of Life, Systems Chemistry
Philosophical aspects relating to the Definition and Nature of Life
Artificial Life
Analogue Electronics

Other misc software projects:

Clarity - a productivity application, allowing multiple desktops on macOS