Agilent Technologies Inc. has announced that Dr Chenli Liu has been selected to receive an Agilent Thought Leader Award. The award will support his pioneering studies on synthetic biology, specifically research to develop a synthetic cell capable of reproducing by coordinating individual cell properties utilising a bottom-up approach to understand biological circuits.

Dr Liu is the Vice President of the Shenzhen Institute of Advanced Technology (SIAT), Chinese Academy of Sciences in China. He is also the founder of iSynBio at SIAT, the largest research institute focused on synthetic biology, as well as the chief scientist of Shenzhen Infrastructure for Synthetic Biology.

His lab at iSynBio is dedicated to the research of quantitative synthetic biology. Based on the research idea of quantitative analysis and synthetic reconstruction, it focuses on the basic principles of the formation process of complex biological systems, as well as the rational design principles of synthetic biological systems and other important scientific issues.

Led by Dr Liu, the Shenzhen synthetic biology research team has been adhering to the frontier of world science and technology and the country's major needs. They actively play a role in major original innovations, original technology sources, and key core technology breakthroughs while promoting the technical level in the field of synthetic biology and the continuous development of innovative capabilities. 

The Agilent Thought Leader Award programme promotes fundamental scientific advances by contributing financial support, products, and expertise to the research of influential thought leaders in the life sciences, diagnostics, and chemical analysis space.