Pick a semester project with DLAI
All of our project can be credited (ECTS)
Our open projects proposed by professors or industry partners.These ideas can serve as a starting point for deeper reflection, and we encourage students to draw inspiration from them to shape their own personal projects.
Of course, new ideas are always welcome, and we are here to help you find the right supervisor for your project. If you're interested in any of these projects, want to know more details, or wish to propose your own, Please contact us, and we’ll guide you through the next steps!
Project philosophy
Projects are developed during the semester, laying the essential groundwork for discovery. To achieve the most significant breakthroughs, we highly recommend continuing your work as a summer lab internship. This is the best way to push your project forward.
For those getting started, we suggest focusing on a binder design project first. This will provide you with the essential skills needed to confidently tackle more complex or "out-of-the-box" protein engineering ideas later on.
Explore our protein model - can you guess the protein?
Designing, building and testing proteins
Before joining any project, please carefully read the expectations .
Our projects span AI‑driven sequence design, structure prediction, and experimental validation in collaboration with EPFL labs. Here you can have an overview of the open projects proposed by our partner labs.
Open Projects
Our projects are developed in collaboration with EPFL research groups who provide scientific guidance, lab space and design challenges. Here is an overview of our hosting laboratories.
Bruno Correia and his team propose:
- Design of artificial converters of chemical energy into molecular motion
- Making proteins seeing the light - Design chromophore binding proteins
- Design of protein prosthetics - rewiring deficient protein interactions in cells
- Exporting membrane protein activities to the soluble proteome
- Computational design of protein-based chaperons to correct protein stability defects
Sahand Rahi and his team propose:
- Inhibit and visualize previously untargetable intra-cellular processes by designing conformation-specific binders - example: age-detecting proteins.
- Target cancer-specific epitopes - examples: cancer-specific surface markers
- Design single-protein computers - examples: AND/OR-logic gating in a single protein
Matteo Dal Peraro and his team propose:
- Designing artificial enzymes for plastic degradation and other sustainability tasks.
- Developing specific sensors for lipid recognition
- Exploring the role of dynamics for protein design
- Designing functional RNA molecules
- Designing nanopores for molecular sensing
Patrick Barth and his team propose:
- De novo design of GPCRs
- De novo design of opto-switchable binders that regulate cell function
- De novo design of opto-switchable ion channels
- De novo design of antigen-binding domains for next generation Chimeric Antigen Receptors
Paolo De Los Rios and his team propose:
- Analyzing and designing chaperone proteins with interpretable AI
