Dr. Nic Lindley studied Applied Biology in the late 1970s and began his research career establishing the biochemical pathways associated with methanol assimilation in yeasts with Prof JR Quayle at Sheffield. After completing his PhD examining hydrocarbon degrading fungi, he obtained a Royal Society European Fellowship Award in 1984 to study anaerobic methanol metabolism in Toulouse where he was later recruited to the CNRS and built his own research team in microbial physiology of industrial microbes at the National Institute of Applied Sciences. He initiated early days research in metabolic engineering as from 1991 working with amino acid and vitamin synthesis in Corynebacterium glutamicum and flavour production in Lactococcus lactis leading to him obtaining the Excel Prize in 1995. He was promoted to a CNRS senior research directorship in 1995 and took over the microbial metabolism division of the Biotechnology-Bioprocess Engineering laboratory in Toulouse. Frustrated by the lack of knowledge of basic molecular mechanisms explaining how microbial phenotypes could be rationally engineered, he developed a systems biology approach to build a more detailed understanding of genome-level regulations of interest in industrial applications, exploiting the emerging omic technology. He was appointed executive director of the LISBP laboratory in Toulouse in 2004 and oversaw its development into a leading biotechnology centre while also overseeing the Toulouse Genopole network of 10 nationally recognized genome-level technology platforms from 2011 onwards. He moved to Singapore in 2016 looking for a new challenge to build the A*STAR Biotransformation Innovation Platform, an industry-facing multidisciplinary initiative looking at the sustainable production of high value-added specialty ingredients for the food and consumer care industries.