Rodrigo Ledesma-Amaro

Rodrigo Ledesma-Amaro

Rodrigo Ledesma-Amaro is a professor at Imperial College London, where he leads a research group working on engineering biology and sustainability. He is the director of the Bezos Centre for Sustainable Proteins and the Microbial Food Hub. His research focuses on the use of microorganisms to convert renewable feedstocks into valuable products (such as food ingredients). He has published over 200 articles – most on topics related to microbial bioproduction (precision, biomass and traditional fermentation).

Rodrigo obtained his PhD at the University of Salamanca (Spain). Before joining Imperial, he carried out his postdoctoral research at the National Research Institute for Agriculture, Food and the Environment (INRAE, France). He has been a visiting researcher at Chalmers University of Technology (Sweden) and AIST (Japan).

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    Article

    From bread to bioreactors: how fermentation can transform the global food system

    2026-06-11T07:45:00

    As pressures on the global food system grow, fermentation is being repurposed as a tool for more sustainable and resilient food production. Shirin Bamezai, PhD candidate in synthetic biology at Imperial College London, and Rodrigo Ledesma-Amaro, Director of the Bezos Centre for Sustainable Protein, examine how advances in synthetic biology are transforming this ancient practice for the future of food.