Dear EUSynBioS community,

we are proud to present our new Advisory Board. It is an honour for the whole EUSynBioS Steering Committee to welcome fourteen leading synthetic biology scientists, who have committed themselves to support our association. Their guidance has, and will further help us shape the synthetic biology community throughout Europe. The Advisory Board is now comprised of:

• Prof Victor de Lorenzo (National Centre of Biotechnology, Madrid)

• Prof Tom Ellis (Imperial College London, London)

• Dr Nicola Patron (Earlham Institute, Norwich)

• Prof Jean-Loup Faulon (University of Manchester, Manchester / INRA, Paris)

• Dr Louise Horsfall (University of Edinburgh, Edinburgh)

• Dr Pablo Ivan Nikel (Technical University of Denmark, Copenhagen)

• Dr Velia Siciliano (Italian Institute of Technology, Napoli)

• Prof Roman Jerala (National Institute of Chemistry, Ljubljana)

• Prof Barbara di Ventura (University of Freiburg, Freiburg)

• Prof Birger Lindberg Moller (University of Copenhagen, Copenhagen)

• Dr Dora Tang (Max Planck Institute of Molecular Cell Biology and Genetics, Dresden)

• Prof Vitor Pinheiro (KU Leuven, Leuven)

• Prof Anthony Forster (Uppsala University, Uppsala)

• Dr Cecilia Arraiano (NOVA University Lisbon, Lisbon)

Our aim is to have an Advisory Board that reflects the diversity of our community. Ten European countries are represented and we hope to further increase this number to include countries less well-known for synthetic biology. Moreover, we are constantly working towards gender balance and we are happy to say that in our new Advisory Board we have increased the number of women compared to previous years. Nevertheless, we will continue to pursue a truly gender balanced, inclusive and diverse Advisory Board in the future.

We want to thank all our Advisory Board members for joining our cause and we are looking forward to our flourishing partnership!