Centre for Engineering Biology

Business minister visits Centre and Foundry

The Rt Hon Lord Henley, Parliamentary Under Secretary of State at the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy (BEIS), visited SynthSys

Image: Lord Henley (far right) and the Foundry directors and staff.
Image: Lord Henley (far right) and the Foundry directors and staff.

Lord Henley was welcomed by Prof Dave Robertson, Vice Principal and Head of the College of Science and Engineering. Prof David Gray, Head of the School of Biological Sciences, then provided an overview of the University’s plan to develop a biotech hub linking together the many areas of expertise in this highly multidisciplinary field. Lord Henley was then introduced to the breadth of exciting synthetic and systems biology ongoing at the UK Centre for Mammalian Synthetic Biology by its Director, Professor Susan Rosser.

The visit was completed with a tour of Edinburgh’s Genome Foundry, where Lord Henley and his team met with Foundry staff and could watch the automated genome assembly platform in action.