Patrick Yizhi Cai - Curriculum Vitae#

• Aug 2017 - present Chair Professor of Synthetic Genomics, Dept. of Chemistry, The University of Manchester
  
• Mar 2017 - Jul, 2017 Reader, School of Biological Sciences, University of Edinburgh
  
• Jul 2013 - Jul, 2017 Chancellor’s Fellow, School of Biological Sciences, University of Edinburgh
  
• Jun 2010 - Jun, 2013 Postdoc Fellow with Autodesk Distinguished Scholarship, Johns Hopkins University

• Jan 2007 - May 2010 Ph.D in Genetics, Bioinformatics and Computational Biology, Virginia Tech, USA
  
• Sep 2005 - Nov 2006 Master of Sciences, majored in Bioinformatics, University of Edinburgh, Edinburgh, UK
  
• Sep 2001 - Jun 2005 Bachelor of Engineering in Computer Sciences, Central South University, China
  

• Chair of Geneva Science and Diplomacy Anticipator, Synthetic Biology
  
• Committee Council member, Hong Kong Research Grant Council International Coordinator, International
  
• Synthetic Yeast Consortium Associate Editor, ACS Synthetic Biology Founding co-Director, Edinburgh Genome Foundry

• Distinguished visiting professorships from MIT (USA), LMB Cambridge & Wellcome Sanger Institute (UK), Hong Kong University and Chinese Academy of Sciences (China)
  
• ERC consolidator award
  
• EPSRC Open Plus Fellowship
  
• Wellcome Trust Frontier Innovator
  
• ICG11 Raising Star in Science
  
• Autodesk Distinguished Scholarship
  
• 2023 KAUST Dean’s Distinguished Lecture
  
• The DeLill Nasser Award for Progressional Development, The Genetic Society of America

• James, J. S et al., “The design and engineering of synthetic genomes”. Nature Review Genetics. 2024 Nov 6. doi: 10.1038/s41576-024-00786-y. PMID: 39506144, (2024).
  
• S. A. Hoffmann, Y. Cai. “Engineering stringent genetic biocontainment of yeast with a protein stability switch”. Nature Communications, vol. 15, iss. 1060, (2024).
  
• D. Schindler, et al., “Design, Construction, and Functional Characterization of a tRNA Neochromosome in Yeast”. with Cover at Cell, vol. 186, iss. 24, pp. 5237–5253, 2023.
  
• Y. Shen et al., “Dissecting aneuploidy phenotypes by constructing Sc2.0 chromosome VII and SCRaMbLEing synthetic disomic yeast”. with Cover at Cell Genomics, vol. 3, iss. 11, no. 100364, 2023.
  
• Y. Zhao et al., “Debugging and consolidating multiple synthetic chromosomes reveals combinatorial genetic interactions”, with Cover at Cell, 2023, Nov 22;186(24):5220-5236.e16.
  
• Shen et al. , “A 770kb fully synthetic yeast chromosome II reveals genomic plasticity and robustness through deep functional profiling”, with Cover at Science. 2017 Mar 10;355(6329). pii: eaaf4791.

• Jan 2025 - Dec 2030, Wellcome Trust, “Synthetic Human Genome.” (£9.8M ), Role: co-PI
  
• Dec 2024 - Dec 2026, Chan Zuckerberg Initiative, “Mating-Inspired Methods for Synthetic Human Chromosomes.” ($1.37M ), Role: co-PI
  
• Jan 2024 - Dec 2028, ERC Consolidator Award, “Genome Refactoring and Engineering Approach to study non-coding genes driving Translation.” (€2M), Role: PI
  
• Oct 2022 - Sep 2027 , EPSRC, “Open Plus Fellowship: Engineering and safeguarding synthetic genomes.” (£1.64M ), Role: PI
  
• Feb 2024 - Aug 2025, BBSRC 23IPAP International Partnering Awards Plus on AI for Bioscience , “AI- assisted DBTL cycle for synthetic yeast promoters.” (£312K ), Role: PI