It is with great sadness that we share the news that Austen Heinz passed away last week. Austen was the founder and CEO of Cambrian Genomics, the gene synthesis company based out of San Francisco.

Austen Heinz was a forward thinking visionary and pioneer in the field of DNA synthesis. He was open to the many possibilities of the growing field of synthetic biology and was inspired to consider technological solutions to a variety of problems.Austen began his synthetic biology career by participating on the Duke iGEM team in 2006, he then went to work at Seoul National University in Korea before returning to the USA to start Cambrian Genomics in 2011.To honor his desire to inspire future generations to seek synthetic biology solutions to everyday problems, Austen’s family has asked that in lieu of flowers, donations be made to the iGEM Foundation.