I am interested in using synthetic biology for therapeutic innovation. These days I work on developing methods to rapidly discover novel bioactive microbial metabolites. Molecules of this type play important roles in medicine and they are a key source of antibiotics, anticancer agents or immunosuppressants. I spend most of my time developing sequencing, bioinformatics and molecular biology methods but I also like to think about how we can involve the general public in helping to source new medicines through citizen science projects.