Instead of studying what biology has already made, we have to imagine what biology could make. You can say, 'Oh, I want a cure for cancer,' but that doesn't tell you what evolutionary pathway will take you from here to there. What are the intermediate steps?

When I started engineering proteins I didn't know how hard it would be.

What I want to do is encourage women to take on this incredibly exciting and fun challenge to use their brains for the benefit of humanity but through science and technology.

All my projects are about sustainability, bioremediation, making things in a cleaner fashion.

Nature's made much more dangerous things than I ever will.

No human can design a good enzyme, yet we are surrounded by them after 3.5 billion years of work by evolution.

There's plenty of ordinary Nobel laureates.

I've done that my whole life - I've taken the way people think and turned it on its head.

I've been called pushy and aggressive and all the negative words that are rarely applied to men with the same traits. But it doesn't bother me.

I wanted to develop a career where I could use my engineering background to have a positive effect on society.