ICOS acts as an interdisciplinary collaboration hub. Our Portabolomics Programme Grant involves six different groups and the three faculties in Newcastle University.

In addition to state-of-the-art synthetic biology, our members conduct internationally leading research on neuroinformatics, bioinformatics and connectomics. We are part of a global network of leading collaboration institutions. These include universities, companies and research laboratories, such as:

• BBN-Raytheon
• Boston University
• Utah University
• Kobe University
• NUS
• Procter & Gamble
• Prozomix
• GSK
• CERN
• ECLT
• Weizmann Institute
• Tel Aviv University
• Granada University
• Centro Nacional de Biotechnologia
• SRC
• Huawei
• Sixfold Bio
• Nanovery
• CPI
• PROIMI

The excellence of the ICOS environment has helped to generate outputs in high quality and highly interdisciplinary areas that range from:

• stem cells and tissue engineering
• computer-driven neurological interventions
• synthetic biology biotechnology
• bio-medical informatics
• DNA/RNA nanotechnology

Translational activity and the establishment of spinouts has also been a strong point of ICOS activity.

For example, the establishment of a software-as-a-service venture, Workli, which enables seamless teamwork via user-friendly collaboration pipelines and professional deep-work coaching.

There is also an established successful collaboration with Prozomix Ltd. to develop metagenome mining software helping to facilitate dramatic growth of the company.

The Synthetic Biology Open Language (SBOL) standard has established an industrial consortium with ten company members internationally.

Because of this, ICOS's RAs and PhD students have participated in incubator and accelerator programmes such as:

• ICURE
• SETsquared
• Health Innovation
• Entrepreneur First

Several RAs have also started their own companies in nano-biotech, making digital pathology available in developing countries, and AI for the creative industries.