Max Wilson received his PhD at Princeton University in Molecular Biology. There he developed synthetic systems and models of metabolic enzymes to understand how subcellular organization of enzymes can be used to program metabolic fluxes. He also developed high-throughput methods and computational approaches for identifying antibiotics with novel mechanisms of action. For his post doc Max worked with Jared Toettcher where he used optogenetic tools to probe how developmental signaling dynamics are processed by mammalian cells. He is currently an Assistant Professor of Quantitative and Systems Biology at the University of California Santa Barbara. Max's lab engineers cellular optogenetic tools to dissect cell fate choices, with a focus on cell behaviors that occur in response to developmental and stress signaling pathways.