Barry Canton
Chief Technical Officer, Ginkgo Bioworks
Barry Canton is the Chief Technical Officer and a founder of Ginkgo Bioworks. Ginkgo is a 500-person Synthetic Biology company spun out of MIT by Barry and four of his MIT colleagues. As CTO, Barry is responsible for the development of the Ginkgo platform for cell programming. While at MIT, Barry obtained a PhD in Biological Engineering, where his work focused on the refinement of genetic devices. At MIT, he was involved with the Synthetic Biology Working Group that was instrumental in catalyzing the emerging field. Barry sits on the board of the International Gene Synthesis Consortium. Barry was born and raised in Ireland and holds a BEng and a MEngSc in Mechanical Engineering from University College Dublin.