Programme Lead, Dr Simon Moore completed his PhD at the University of Kent in 2012. Significantly, he elucidated the anaerobic biosynthetic pathways for vitamin B12 and coenzyme F430 - two vital life-supporting molecules from the tetrapyrrole family, the so-called “pigments of life”. Simon then joined the synthetic biology centre at Imperial College London in 2014, where he expanded his interest into cell-free gene expression systems. Here he realised the potential of cell-free systems for accelerating research in synthetic biology, using cell-free systems for prototyping of gene expression and biosynthetic systems. Simon established his research group at the University of Kent in 2018, before transferring to Queen Mary University of London in 2023.