Craig Woods has a background in genetics, next-generation sequencing, and bioinformatics from Imperial College London and the University of Nottingham. Following PhD Craig worked as a post-doctoral researcher working on biofuel producing Clostridia sponsored by Lanzatech. In 2019 Craig joined a sustainable alternative protein company called Deep Branch becoming VP of R&D where he led the strain development and scale-up process development teams. In 2023 Craig left Deep Branch to become CEO at University of Nottingham spin-out Forge Genetics. Forge was created to commercialise a novel gene-editing tool called “Forge Editing”. Forge Editing is currently being used to manipulate difficult to engineer bacteria and is being developed for use as a safer alternative to CRISPR editing in gene therapy applications.