Our goal is to advance bio-based technologies for energy and chemical production so that these industries can once again become environmentally sustainable. For this, we need to train the next generation of scientists and engineers to have cross-disciplinary STEM skills in a highly motivated environment with well-equipped labs that focus on synthetic biology.
The ERA Chair in Synthetic Biology at University of Tartu (SynBioTEC) was created to bring together expertise and know-how in the field of synthetic and systems biology. The newly recruited team of researchers will bring about structural changes at the University of Tartu Institute of Technology so that we may synergistically merge the competences of existing molecular biology research groups and foster an excellent research environment able to develop industrially relevant designer cells, cell factories, and biosensors. The SynBioTEC project will form the basis of establishing a multidisciplinary Estonian Centre of Synthetic Biology. The Estonian Centre of Synthetic Biology will combine the experience of four core facilities: synthetic biology, proteomics, cell culture, and microscopy, and yield an excellent platform to develop synthetic designer cells for industrial applications and spin-off companies that will move forward to the product development phase with our promising discoveries and ideas.
