of the world's 3000 most influential scientific minds in 2014. He was featured in The Australian as one of the top forty research superstars in Australia. Indicative of his scientific esteem, he received a Macquarie University Research Excellence Award in 2014.He received a PhD from Monash University and was an NHMRC C.J. Martin Fellow at the University of California at San Diego. He then took a faculty position at the Institute for Genomic Research (TIGR), where he led many microbial genome sequencing projects. Ian returned to Australia in 2007 as a Professor at Macquarie University and received a Life Science Research Award from the NSW Office of Science and Medical Research. He is the founder and Director of the new Synthetic Biology Laboratory at Macquarie University. His published work has received significant press attention, including two interviews on the Channel 7 news in the last two years, as well as numerous radio and newspaper interviews, including in the Washington Post and New York Times.