Professor Wallace Marshall is an engineer by background and has developed engineering perspectives on the analysis of cellular systems and dynamics.

He has a particular interest in the interplay between biochemical and cell-mechanical processes, and in the ways these processes affect cell fate decisions. He is the director of the Centre for Cellular Engineering at the University of California at San Francisco. In this role he has established one of the worldleading research centres considering how we can use models and engineering methods to understand cellular behaviour and control cellular function.

Professor Marshall’s pioneering work in driving convergence between the physical, mathematical, engineering and life-sciences extends to the development of outreach activities. Here he has collaborated with the Exploratorium in San Francisco, to develop displays that educate the general public on how we, as human beings, are shaped by both our genes and our environments and how our bodies trillions of cells work together to create a human self.