In March 2017, Dr Colette Matthewman joined participants from industry, civil society, funding bodies and academia for an Industrial Dialogue on Synthetic Biology as part of the EU-funded SMART.map project (http://projectsmartmap.eu). The workshop was held at the Manchester Institute of Biotechnology.

The SMART.map project is developing RoadMAPs to Societal Mobilisation for the Advancement of Responsible Industrial Technologies. Its goal is to define and implement concrete roadmaps for the responsible development of technologies and services in three key time-changing fields: precision medicine, 3D printing in biomedicine and synthetic biology.

The Manchester dialogue provided a framework for discussions on the challenges facing synthetic biology companies, especially in the area of responsible research and innovation (RRI) and the development of concepts for tools that could help industry to engage with and integrate RRI into their synthetic biology working practice more easily. Read more in this blog and the video below.