ICOS represents a hub of interdisciplinary collaboration with other NU schools, The group's Portabolomics Programme Grant involves six different groups and all three of NU’s Faculties.

In addition to state-of-the-art synthetic biology, ICOS members conduct internationally leading research on neuroinformatics, bioinformatics and connectomics. In this respect, ICOS is part of a strong network of leading international collaborating institutions including universities, companies and research laboratories. These institutions include including 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, and PROIMI. The excellence of ICOS environment has helped to generate outputs in high quality and highly interdisciplinary areas that range from stem cells and tissue engineering to computer-driven neurological interventions, synthetic biology biotechnology, bio-medical informatics and 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. As a result of these activities, and others, ICOS' RAs and PhD students have participated in incubator and accelerator programmes such as ICURE, SETsquared, Health Innovation, and Entrepreneur First. Several RAs have also started their own companies in the area of nano-biotech and making digital pathology available in third world countries, and AI for the creative industries.

ICOS strategic goal in the next 5 years is to cement further a worldwide technological lead in computer-aided biology and computer-aided nanotechnology.

A key objective will be to build on our investment in our automation facilities, combining our strengths in automation and in computational intelligence and reasoning, to position ICOS as an international strength in bioengineering automation.

A second key objective is to build on the successful applied and impactful activities of the REF2021 period, accelerating translational and spinout activity to exploit the science produced by the group. ICOS will build on this experience and, with the help of NU’s business development unit, convert its internationally leading research outputs into commercial opportunities.