June Medford is a Professor of Biology at Colorado State University where she has been a faculty member since 1996. She completed her Ph.D. in 1986 at Yale University and did her postdoc with Monsanto’s Plant Molecular Biology Group. She is also the founder and president of the biotechnology company Phytodetectors. A recognized world leader in plant synthetic biology, Dr. Medford is at the forefront in developing methodologies and applications for synthetic biology implemented in plants. She developed the first plant sentinels, plants transformed with the computationally designed ability to detect and respond to exogenous substances, as well as programmable genetic controllers and new technology using a synthetic desalination circuit. Dr. Medford is active in promoting the potential of plant synthetic biology to a wide audience of scientists and policy makers, and is a member of several scientific advisory boards and three editorial boards.