Professor Paul Freemont is the co-founder and co-director of the National UK Translation Centre for Synthetic Biology, SynbiCITE and operational director of the London BioFoundry at Imperial College London. He is also the Head of the Section of Structural and Synthetic Biology in the Department of Infectious Diseases at Imperial. He was previously the Head of the Division of Molecular Biosciences and Centre for Structural Biology having joined Imperial from Cancer Research UK London Research Institute (now known as the Crick Research Institute) where he was a Principle Investigator. His research interests are focused on developing synthetic biology foundational tools, automation and biofoundries and cell-free systems for specific applications including biosensing and metabolic engineering. He is author of over 300 scientific publications and is an elected member of European Molecular Biology Organisation and Fellow of the Royal Society of Biology, Royal Society of Chemistry and Royal Society of Medicine and is an Honorary Fellow of the Royal College of Art. He was a co-author of the British Government’s UK Synthetic Biology Roadmap and is currently a council member of the US Engineering Biology Research Consortium and member of the UK governments Office for Science and Technology Engineering Biology sub-group.