Dr. Pardee was a research scientist at the Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering at Harvard University where he developed the first safe and sterile method to deploy gene circuits out of the lab, creating a platform for programmable in vitro diagnostics. Dr. Pardee’s current research focuses on the potential of moving synthetic biology outside of the cell; rather than using cells to host engineered genetic programs, where he is creating programmable materials with the transcription and translation properties of a cell.