Zhanar Abil received her PhD from the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, where she focused on the study and engineering of programmable nucleic acid-binding proteins as tools for genome editing and gene expression regulation. As a postdoc at Delft University of Technology, she focused on experimental in vitro evolution of a minimal DNA replicator toward the construction of a synthetic protocell. After completion of her postdoctoral training, she worked as a scientific consultant at Strand Therapeutics, where she contributed to the design of RNA tools for cancer vaccine development. Since 2023, Abil has been an assistant professor at the University of Florida, where she leads a research program leveraging in vitro evolution to build a synthetic cell. Abil was a recipient of a LEaDing Fellowship from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 Research and Innovation Program and is a co-inventor on two filed patent applications.