To most teenagers, Jurassic Park is nothing more than an entertaining film with thrilling action scenes, realistic effects, and a catchy soundtrack. However, for Jason Kelly — founder and CEO of Ginkgo Bioworks — the movie and book served as an introduction to the innovative world of genetic engineering and its limitless possibilities. Kelly, who grew up in Jupiter, FL, recalls being fascinated with the scientific and creative nature of the story, which inspired him to work on a high school project in genetic engineering and, later, pursue a career in the field.
Kelly attended the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) for his undergraduate degree, double majoring in chemical engineering and biology. He stayed at MIT to pursue his PhD in biological engineering, which he completed in 2008. While working on his PhD, Kelly noticed a gap in the field of genetic engineering. In order to engineer an enzyme, for example, one would need to spend countless hours in a lab, editing numerous different segments of genetic code and testing to see if the enzyme performed the desired function. This process, in addition to being tedious and prone to human error, is a rate-limiting step in the advancement of biotechnology products. Kelly, having experienced this firsthand, wanted to change this.
Seeking a solution, Kelly turned to the origins of chemical engineering for inspiration. Before the field as we know it today was developed, scientists used applied chemistry to solve complex problems. Without the modern chemical engineering toolkit, specifically unit operations, scientists mainly relied on batch processing to manufacture industrial chemicals. The development of unit operations — such as distillation columns, crystallizers, and heat exchangers — revolutionized problem-solving by breaking processes into manageable steps. Kelly wondered if he could replicate this concept in biotechnology. “What are the equivalents of that for genetic engineering?” he questioned. “What are our unit operations?”
After earning his PhD, Kelly founded Ginkgo with three fellow graduate students and...
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