Yaakov (Kobi) Benenson is a Professor of Synthetic Biology at the Biosystems Department (D-BSSE) of ETH Zurich in Basel. He studied chemistry and biochemistry at the Technion, and did his PhD at the Weizmann Institute. During his PhD he invented and developed autonomous DNA-based state machines, and was named one of the world’s top 100 young innovators by MIT Technology Review. Between 2005-2010 he was a Bauer Fellow and a group leader at Harvard’s Center for Systems Biology, where his group pioneered multi-input synthetic gene circuits for tumor cell targeting and eradication. Since 2010 he is at the Biosystems Department of ETH Zurich in Basel. His group focuses on both basic and translational research, applying synthetic biology to unmet needs in medicine. Benenson is a member of numerous institutional committees, and a Scientific Advisory Board member for the National Center for Biotechnology of the Spanish Research Council and for the Centre for Synthetic Biology at the Technical University Darmstadt. He is a scientific advisor for a number of companies and a cofounder of Pattern BioSciences.