Ashty Karim is currently the Director of Research for the Center of Synthetic Biology and a Research Assistant Professor of Chemical and Biological Engineering at Northwestern University. With a foundation in synthetic biology, he works at the intersection of biology and chemistry developing powerful, enabling technologies to efficiently harness biological systems to produce valuable chemicals as well as building new educational frameworks for teaching synthetic biology. He has worked in cell-free systems for the past 10 years focusing on enzymes and metabolism publishing across many journals including Nature Biotechnology, Metabolic Engineering, Nature Chemical Biology, and ACS Synthetic Biology. Dr. Karim earned his B.S. degrees in Chemical Engineering and in Biology from the University of Texas at Austin and received his Ph.D. in Chemical Engineering from Northwestern University.