BIOENGINEERING AND SYNTHETIC BIOLOGY

Academic Year 2025/2026 - Teacher: GIUSEPPE NICOSIA

Expected Learning Outcomes

By the end of the course, students will be able to model and address a significant number of biotechnological and biomedical problems using tools, methodologies, and algorithms specific to the state-of-the art Artificial Intelligence.

Course Structure

 Classes are attended in person.

Required Prerequisites

 There are no prerequisites required.

Attendance of Lessons

Classes are attended in person.

Detailed Course Content

The "Bioengineering and Synthetic Biology (AI for Biotechnology and Biomedicine)" course will address topics in Artificial Intelligence (AI), Generative AI, Graph Neural Networks, and Large Language Models (LLMs) applied to relevant problems in biotechnology and biomedicine.  During the course, there will be a series of seminars by experts (both academic and industry) in LLMs and Generative AI.  The material consists of slides, articles, and an LLM textbook.  The exam consists of a project assigned by the instructor.  Please feel free to contact Prof. Nicosia (giuseppe.nicosia@unict.it) if you require further information and/or details.

Textbook Information

Gerhard Paass, Sven Giessbach, "Foundation Models for Natural Language Processing", Springer 2023.

Learning Assessment

Learning Assessment Procedures

The exam consists of a project assigned by the Lecturer.

Examples of frequently asked questions and / or exercises

LLMs for Gene Editing

Graph Neural Networks for Predicting Molecule Toxicity