Wendell Lim is currently a Professor in the Departments of Pharmacology and Biochemistry at the University of California San Francisco (UCSF), and an Investigator of the Howard Hughes Medical Institute. A native of Chicago, Lim received his AB in Chemistry at Harvard University, working with Jeremy Knowles; his PhD in Biochemistry and Biophysics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, working with Robert Sauer; and completed postdoctoral research in Molecular Biophysics at Yale University, working with Frederic Richards. He is the recipient of awards from the Packard Foundation, Searle Foundation, and Burroughs Wellcome Fund. He is the Director of the Cell Propulsion Lab, an NIH Roadmap Nanomedicine Development Center, and Deputy Director of the NSF Synthetic Biology Engineering Research Center. He is also a member of the National Cancer Institute Board of Scientific Counselors. Lim’s research focuses on cell signaling – understanding the molecular circuits that allow cells to communicate, detect signals, make decisions, and execute complex behaviors. He is also a pioneer in the emerging field of Synthetic Biology, which attempts to utilize our understanding of biological mechanisms to engineer cells and biological systems with useful applications in diverse areas of ranging from medicine to agriculture to energy. He is a leading expert on how to rewire cells to control and modulate what types of decisions they make.