Engineering biology

David Baulcombe is a plant molecular biologist with an interest in disease resistance.  He and his group discovered small RNA and various protein components of an RNA silencing system that protects plants against viruses and affects patterns of plant gene expression. David’s work has been recognised by awards including the Gruber Genetics Prize (2014), the Balzan Prize (2012) (for epigenetics), the Wolf Prize for Agriculture (2010) the Albert Lasker Award for Basic Medical Research (2008) and a Royal Medal (2006) of the Royal Society. He is an International Member of the National Academy of Sciences (USA) (elected 2005) and was made a Knight Bachelor in 2009. Since 2007 he is Professor of Botany (Regius since 2012) (now Emeritus) in Cambridge and he was a Royal Society Research Professor (2007-2022).  

Martin Dawson is professor and director of research at the University of Strathclyde’s Institute of Photonics, which he helped establish almost 25 years ago. Since 2012 he has also been the inaugural Head of the Fraunhofer Centre for Applied Photonics (Fraunhofer CAP) in Glasgow. Martin has contributed broadly to laser and semiconductor research including ultrafast lasers, optically-pumped semiconductor lasers, diamond photonics and micro-LEDs, the latter of which is now emerging globally as a new form of commercial display technology. He holds fellowships of the IEEE, OSA, Institute of Physics and Royal Society of Edinburgh, and he has been awarded the Dennis Gabor Medal and Prize of the IOP and the Aron Kressel Award of the IEEE.

Jason Chin is a Programme Leader at the Medical Research Council Laboratory of Molecular Biology (MRCLMB), where he is also Head of the Centre for Chemical & Synthetic Biology (CCSB). He is a Professor of Chemistry & Chemical Biology at the University of Cambridge, and holds a joint appointment at the University of Cambridge Department of Chemistry. He is also a fellow in Natural Sciences at Trinity College, Cambridge. Jason is a native of the UK. He was an undergraduate at Oxford University, where he worked with Professor John Sutherland on Cephalosporin biosynthesis. He obtained his PhD as a Fulbright awardee from Yale University, working with Professor Alanna Schepartz. He was a Damon Runyon Fellow at The Scripps Research Institute with Professor Peter Schultz where he developed the first approaches to systematically expand the genetic code of eukaryotic cells and pioneered approaches, that are now widely used, for defining protein interactions by genetically encoding photocrosslinking amino acids. Jason’s work has been recognized by a number of awards, including: the Francis Crick Prize (Royal Society), the Corday Morgan Prize (Royal Society of Chemistry), European Molecular Biology Organization’s (EMBO) Gold Medal, Louis-Jeantet Young Investigator Career Award, Sackler International Prize in the Physical Science. He is in the European Inventors Hall of Fame, a member of EMBO, a Fellow of the Academy of Medical Sciences, and a Fellow of The Royal Society. Jason’s early work provided a foundation for Ambrx and he is the founder and CSO of Constructive Bio. He is also a non-executive director at the UK Government’s Department of Science, Innovation and Technology.

David Tew is a Senior Scientific Director at GSK.  David has 35 years of experience in the pharmaceutical industry including early drug discovery, mechanistic enzymology, assay development, reagent generation and the application of Synthetic Biology.  Most recently David has been leading a project to apply Synthetic Biology to redesign the manufacture of therapeutic oligonucleotides.  This has resulted in a platform approach to therapeutic oligonucleotide synthesis and manufacture that is both scalable and more sustainable than current approaches.  

David held a position as The Royal Society Entrepreneur in Residence at Bristol University working with BrisSynBio and the Bristol Biodesign Institute from 2018 to 2022.
During the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic, David lead the innovation workstream for the Cambridge COVID-19 Testing Centre, a collaboration between AstraZeneca, GlaxoSmithKline and the University of Cambridge.

Nicola is a plant molecular and synthetic biologist in the Department of Plant Sciences, University of Cambridge. Her research uses synthetic biology approaches to understand the production of plant specialised metabolites and to investigate how quantitative plant traits emerge from network functions. Her lab also develops tools and technologies for plant biotechnology, with the aim of driving innovation in agriculture and biomanufacturing. Nicola’s first experiment with plants was as a high-school member of SEDS (Students for the Exploration and Development of Space), growing seeds exposed to cosmic radiation. Nicola has a PhD in plant molecular biology and did post-doctoral research on plastid metabolism at the John Innes Centre and the University of British Columbia. As a SynBioLEAP fellow, she was recognised as an emerging leader in synthetic biology. She started her lab at the Earlham Institute in 2016 where she was also the Director of the Earlham Biofoundry and relocated to the University of Cambridge in 2024. Nicola co-founded Black in Plant Science, a network to connect, celebrate, and cultivate UK-based Black plant scientists.

Christopher Hunter is the Chief Operating Officer and a board director of Colorifix, a UK-based synthetic biology company that has developed an entirely biological process to produce, deposit and fix pigments onto materials. He has been with Colorifix for over six years, working with the founders and wider team first to commercialise and now to scale up its technology. Christopher is also a trustee of two environmental charities, the Belu Foundation and the SEM Charitable Trust. Previously, he worked as an investor at multiple venture capital funds and as a founder-operator. He has a BA from Pomona College, California, and an MBA from Said Business School, University of Oxford.

Sara supports early-stage scientist-founded companies that are engineering biology in the UK, Europe and elsewhere, to identify and protect their IP, and come up with a solid IP strategy.

These companies operate across all sectors, including food, therapeutics, agritech, materials, chemicals and oil manufacture.

Sara is proactive in the engineering biology community, being appointed to the UK Government’s DSIT Engineering Biology Steering Group, in addition to being the vice chair role of the Bioindustry Associations’ Engineering Biology Advisory Committee (EBAC), co-founding the Women in Synthetic Biology and east midlands based BioAmass networks, and mentoring on a number of different programmes.

Anne Osbourn is a Group Leader at the John Innes Centre working on plant natural products. Her discovery that in plant genomes the genes needed to make particular natural products are often organised in clusters like ‘beads on a string’ has greatly accelerated the discovery of new pathways and chemistries.  She has established a synthetic biology platform based on transient plant expression that provides rapid access to previously inaccessible compounds at gram scale. These two step changes open up new routes to combine genomics and synthetic biology to synthesize and access previously inaccessible natural products and analogs for medicinal, agricultural and industrial applications.  Anne was awarded the Novozymes 2023 Award in recognition of her scientific contributions.  She is also a poet, and has developed and co-ordinates the Science, Art and Writing (SAW) Initiative (www.sawtrust.org), a cross-curricular science education outreach programme. Her prize-winning poetry collection ‘Mock Orange’ was published in 2020.

Whilst studying at the John Innes Centre for my PhD in Plant Pathology, I began volunteering for the Science Art and Writing (SAW) Trust. SAW is an education charity that brings together scientists, artists and writers to take stories out of research labs and into classrooms and public spaces for people to explore current research themes through practical science, poetry and visual arts. I transitioned from postdoctoral research at JIC to become the full-time programme manager for the trust in 2012 where I oversee all aspects of SAW, from project design and delivery to fundraising, social media and engagement. Funded by charities, organisations and research councils (incl. Heritage Lottery Fund, Carnegie UK, Wellcome Trust, The Royal Society, Festival Republic, UK Research and Innovation), we have successfully delivered projects on a wide range of topics from climate change and wellbeing to food production and engineering biology.

Joyce Tait (Director, Innogen Institute, University of Edinburgh) has an interdisciplinary systems analysis background linking natural and social sciences to support the delivery of innovative technologies with economic and societal benefits. She works on: industry strategic planning for innovation; responsible innovation; policies, regulation and standards; and new approaches to stakeholder engagement about technological innovation.

She is currently a member of the Regulatory Horizons Council (RHC) and other recent appointments include: the Prime Minister’s Council for Science and Technology; the Synthetic Biology Leadership Council (and Chair of its Governance Subgroup); and Governing Board of the Industrial Biotechnology Innovation Centre, University of Strathclyde. She has been involved in the development of the RHC reports on Regulating Quantum Technology Applications, The Regulation of Hydrogen Fuel Propulsion in Maritime Vessels, Neurotechnology, and Genetic Technologies. She was also technical author of the BSI PAS 440 Guide to Responsible Innovation.

Sarah Cunningham-Burley is Chair of the Nuffield Council on Bioethics. The Nuffield Council on Bioethics is a leading independent policy and research centre, and the foremost bioethics body in the UK. The NCOB  works to inform policy and public debate by identifying, analysing and advising on ethical issues raised by developments in biomedicine and health and to embed ethics at the centre of decisions, so we all benefit.

Sarah is Professor of Medical and Family Sociology and Co-director of the Wellcome supported Centre for Biomedicine, Self and Society at the Usher Institute, University of Edinburgh. This is an interdisciplinary social science and humanities research centre focusing on developments in health-related science and care. Her own research interests span the social and ethical aspects of personalized medicine, health-related AI and data science, and the integration of patient and public perspectives in research and policy.

Damian holds a BSc in Chemistry, MSc in Surface Science & Catalysis and a PhD in Tribology from the University of Cambridge. Upon graduation Damian joined the Croda Graduate Development Programme in 2001. Over the past 23 years Damian has held several positions across different Croda markets, divisions and functions including Personal Care Sales Manager for Latin America, Performance Technologies Business Development Manager for North America and Life Sciences Vice President for Europe with both Technical and Commercial responsibility. Damian is presently Vice President Innovation & Technology Development for all Croda businesses globally and has responsibility for the acquisition and licensing of new technologies that match the needs of all Croda’s end markets.

Nigel is Director of the UK Future Biomanufacturing Research Hub, and Founder and Director of the company C3 BIOTECH Ltd. He is former Director of the Manchester Institute of Biotechnology (2010-2020). He was elected Fellow of the Royal Society in 2020. Nigel has an established position in the field of enzyme catalysis, biophysics and biomolecular engineering. His group is noted for its contributions to catalysis science, especially in the fields of quantum biology, dynamics and biocatalysis, mechanistic and synthetic biology, and bio-based chemicals and fuels manufacture. In his work with C3 BIOTECH, he leads pilot plant developments for chemicals biomanufacturing. This uses engineering biology through systems engineering of emergent technologies, and the integration of biology and chemistry platforms at the process level.

Zoe Woods is an entrepreneur with a background in strategy and innovation. Before founding her current startup, Zoe worked in consulting and at a think-thank, where she focused on strategies to enhance economic productivity and inclusion. Currently, she is working on building a more circular economy through Change Bio, an early-stage venture developing an innovative protein production platform. She holds an MBA and a Master of Public Policy from the University of Oxford.

Recently retired from GSK Ted’s experience covers large scale manufacturing of fermentation products and process development of small molecule biotechnology processes. Ted was responsible for Industrialising GSK’s Advanced Manufacturing Synthetic Biochemistry programme which moved enzyme usage from the catalyst of last resort to being present in over 50% of new small molecule processes. Ted’s team in Worthing identified, commissioned and optimised numerous natural product, enzyme and metabolic engineered processes from discovery to over 100,000l scale. 

Ted is passionate about the potential of biotechnology to increase the sustainability of manufacturing and create new value.

Ted was a non-exec member of the IBioIC governing board for many years.

Robert Harris is Head of Microbial Technologies, Biologicals Research at Syngenta Crop Protection. Based in the UK, his role is focused on building global microbial platforms and technologies that will deliver biological products for future global sustainable agriculture systems. Following an undergraduate degree in biochemistry from the University of Cardiff, and a PhD in biochemical engineering from University College London, Robert initially joined Syngenta as a fermentation scientist in 2001 and gained broad experience over 15 years in varying roles. This focused on developing microbes and bioprocesses for businesses in crop protection, biopharma, enzymes and biocontrols. In 2016 Robert moved to lead a group of scientists responsible for microbial discovery, synthetic biology, and bioprocess development supporting the biologicals business within Syngenta.

Christopher Kaminker, PhD, Managing Director, is Head of the Sustainable Investment Research & Analytics (SIRA) team within the BlackRock Investment Institute (BII). SIRA comprises the BSI Intel, Climate & Sustainability Research and APAC Sustainable Investment Research teams. He is as well, the Deputy Head of Sustainable and Transition Solutions (STS). He is a member of BlackRock's Sustainable and Transition Investment Committee, and EMEA Investments Committee.

Prior to joining BlackRock, Chris was Group Head of Sustainable Investment at Lombard Odier, a Swiss private bank and asset manager. He led a group responsible for sustainable investment research, data science and analytics, product development, portfolio strategy and stewardship. Chris is an energy economist and economic geographer by training, a Visiting Business Fellow at the Smith School of Enterprise and the Environment at Oxford University, and a Fellow of the Royal Geographical Society. He received his PhD from Oxford University and masters from Columbia University (SIPA).

Professor Paul Freemont is the co-founder of the Imperial College Centre for Synthetic Biology and Innovation and co-founder and co-director of the National UK Innovation and Knowledge Centre for Synthetic Biology (SynbiCITE - since 2013). His research is focused on developing automation and biofoundries and cell-free systems for specific synthetic biology applications. He is a council member of the US Engineering Biology Research Consortium and co-chair of the newly formed UK Governments Engineering Biology Steering Group and sits on the UK Governments Biosecurity Leadership Council. He is a member of the World Economic Forum Global Future Council on Synthetic Biology and is currently leading a US-funded Task Force on Engineering Biology Metrics and Technical Standards for Global Bioeconomy. He is also co-founder and founding chair of the Global Biofoundry Alliance. He is a passionate advocate for the commercialisation of engineering biology and is co-founder of the Imperial spin-out Solena Materials Ltd developing designer protein fibres and also of SynBioVen Ltd, an early-stage seed investment company for engineering biology start-ups in the UK. 

Jason is a scientist and entrepreneur, passionate about translating innovative technologies into better patient outcomes. 

As CEO and Co-Founder of Start Codon, a UK-based accelerator, he aims to discover the most disruptive life science, BioTech and healthcare founders and help them translate their innovations into successful ventures. This is achieved through a combination of seed funding and a bespoke venture-building programme, which taps into the exceptional resources of the Cambridge cluster as well as the global network and knowledge of Jason and the Start Codon team. 

Previously, he was CEO of Cambridge Epigenetix (now Biomodal) and Business Development Manager for Horizon Discovery’s diagnostics division. He also served as an associate for Cambridge Enterprise, the technology transfer office of the University of Cambridge. 

Jason had completed his PhD in Medicine at the University of Cambridge and is also a visiting Fellow at Jesus College, Cambridge, and lives in Cambridge with his husband and sons.

Mark leads on key elements of the growth agenda for engineering biology in the Department for Science, Innovation and Technology. He has worked across R&D funding, infrastructure, regulation and standards, talent and skills and business finance for engineering biology since 2021. A civil servant who has a career focus on science and technology policy, prior to this role he worked on ‘deep tech’ innovation, on EU Exit, on the establishment of UK Research & Innovation, and on the Newton Fund. He has a PhD in Experimental Psychology from the University of Cambridge. 

I am a Technical Specialist at ARIA where I am responsible for evaluating proposals and providing recommendations to fund projects as part of our Opportunity space on Programmable Plants. I also work in an advisory capacity with the teams we fund to ensure timely technical delivery and good sharing of knowledge within the communities we help create.

I have experience working in software/hardware biotech startups in the agricultural and medical sectors - first at Synthace, a software company working on empowering scientist to optimise experimental design and easily use automation; and more recently at Gardin, a hardware/software company developing a low cost insight platform to optimise production in controlled environment agriculture, where I headed the Plant Science R&D department and was part of the founding leadership team.

I hold a PhD in Plant Science from Cambridge, and joint degrees in biotechnology from the University of Pisa and the Sant’Anna School of Advanced Studies, and my specialties include plant science, molecular biology, genetics and synbio.

Dr Rowan McKibbin is an Associate Director at BBSRC, part of UKRI. Her portfolio is concerned with the development and provision of cutting-edge technologies and infrastructure to push the frontiers of bioscience, particularly in emerging technology areas such as Engineering Biology, AI and Data Intensive Bioscience more broadly. She has oversight of three teams (Transformative Technologies, Infrastructure, and the Rules of Life) which together underpin and enable modern bioscience. Having delivered the previous £114M Synthetic Biology for Growth Programme, recent activities in Engineering Biology include leading UKRI’s £125M exercise to establish a number of mission oriented ‘hubs’ and associated awards. This forms a key part of an integrated research and innovation programme to deliver UK research capacity and capability, drive technology development and uptake, and stimulate innovation to tackle major challenges through a mission-oriented focus.

Professor Dame Angela McLean DBE FRS is the Government Chief Scientific Adviser having taken up the role in April 2023. She is also Head of the Government Science and Engineering Profession. Prior to this Angela was the Chief Scientific Adviser for the Ministry of Defence.

Until April 2023, Angela McLean was a Professor of Mathematical Biology in the Department of Zoology at Oxford University and a Fellow of All Souls College.

Angela is interested in the use of natural science evidence in formulating public policy and has co-developed the Oxford Martin School Restatements.

Angela established Mathematical Biology at the Biotechnology and Biological Science Research Council’s Institute for Animal Health in 1994.

In 2009 Angela was elected as a Fellow of the Royal Society. She has been awarded the Gabor Medal and the Weldon Memorial Prize. She received her damehood in the 2018 Queen’s Birthday Honours List. In 2024 Angela was appointed an Honorary Distinguished Professor of Loughborough University.

Damian holds a BSc in Chemistry, MSc in Surface Science & Catalysis and a PhD in Tribology from the University of Cambridge. Upon graduation Damian joined the Croda Graduate Development Programme in 2001. Over the past 23 years Damian has held several positions across different Croda markets, divisions and functions including Personal Care Sales Manager for Latin America, Performance Technologies Business Development Manager for North America and Life Sciences Vice President for Europe with both Technical and Commercial responsibility. Damian is presently Vice President Innovation & Technology Development for all Croda businesses globally and has responsibility for the acquisition and licensing of new technologies that match the needs of all Croda’s end markets.