Harrison Steel is an Associate Professor of Engineering Science at the University of Oxford and fellow of Harris Manchester College. His work is at the interface of control engineering, synthetic biology, and robotics. He builds new technologies that combine electronic and biological components, and applies these to address new scientific questions as well as industrial and environmental applications. Recently this has included building tools that can better understand the evolution of antibiotic resistance, control microbial ecosystems (such as the gut microbiome), and use bacteria for environmentally-friendly production of chemicals. Dr Steel's research group has pioneered low-cost bioreactor technologies that are widely used for optogenetic studies, and is currently developing high-throughput platforms for light-based control and selection of cells.