Trained as a Computer Scientist at the University of Jena, Germany, my interests drifted more and more towards "computing life" during my PhD at Simon Fraser University and the University of British Columbia, Canada. On one hand, that term captures that I got fascinated by the idea to understand life as a form of computation and to describe, reprogram, and reassemble parts of cells as described in many brilliant experiments from a spectrum of disciplines ranging from DNA computing to Synthetic ...