Building a multibillion-dollar synthetic biology industry with positive impact

Bio

Bio

MSc in Chemical Engineering, PhD (1989) in Biochemical Engineering and dr.techn. (1995) from the Danish Technical University (DTU). Honorable dr.med. from University of Gothenburg. Fulbright visiting professor at MIT in 1995-1996. Professor at DTU in 1998. In 2008 he was recruited as Professor to Chalmers University of Technology, Sweden. In 2015 he was founding Head of the Department of Life Sciences, which now encompass more than 250 people. Jens Nielsen was also a co-founder of the Novo Nordisk Foundation Center for Biosustainability that now has more than 300 people affiliated, for which he served as CSO 2013-2018. From 2019 CEO of the BioInnovation Institute in Denmark, which is a new institute financed by USD500M that fosters translational research and support new spin-out companies in life sciences. He has trained more than 280 scientists in his research group and published >850 publications that have been cited more than 126,000 times (current H-factor 162). Inventor of >50 patents and founder of six biotech companies. Has received numerous awards, including the ENI Award, the Eric and Sheila Samson Prime Minister Prize for Transportation Fuels, the Novozymes Prize, and the Gold Medal from the Royal Swedish Academy of Engineering Sciences. Member of 13 academies, including NAS, NAE, NAM, Chinese Academy of Engineering, EMBO and Royal Swedish Academy of Science.

Bio

Dr. Smolke, a pioneer in the fields of synthetic biology and metabolic engineering, joined Caltech’s faculty in 2003 as an Assistant Professor of Chemical Engineering and joined Stanford’s faculty in 2009, where she was Professor of Bioengineering. Dr. Smolke’s early work pioneered the design and application of a broad class of RNA molecules, RNA switches, that detect chemical signals and regulate targeted protein activities, providing programmable platforms for building biological sensors and control systems. At Stanford, her team led the breakthrough research to engineer baker’s yeast to produce some of the most complex and valuable plant-based essential medicines known to humankind. At Antheia, her vision and leadership has enabled a synthetic biology platform that dramatically expands the diversity and complexity of molecules that can be reconstructed, enabling new possibilities for drug discovery as well as efficient, sustainable, transparent, on-demand drug manufacturing at scale.

Dr. Smolke’s impact in advancing the frontiers of biotechnology has been recognized with numerous awards, including Chan Zuckerberg Biohub Investigator, Nature’s 10, AIMBE College of Fellows, NIH Director’s Pioneer Award, NSF Career Award, Novozymes Award for Excellence in Biochemical Engineering, WTN Award in Biotechnology, and TR35 Award.

Bio

The Rt Hon Lord Willetts FRS, HonFREng is Chair of the Foundation for Science and Technology and of the UK Space Agency. Lord Willetts served as Minister for Universities and Science (2010-2014). He has held a range of Board positions across the Space and Science sector. He was a Board member of the UK Research and Innovation (UKRI), Surrey Satellite Technology Ltd (SSTL), and Chair of the British Science Association.

Lord Willetts is a visiting Professor at King’s College London and an Honorary Fellow of Nuffield College, Oxford.