David Sun Kong, Ph.D. is a talented and multi-faceted individual with a diverse background spanning synthetic biology, community organizing, music, and photography. He holds a Bachelor of Science and both a Master of Science and Doctor of Philosophy from Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in Chemical Engineering and Media Arts and Sciences, respectively. David is esteemed as a pioneer in developing "lab-on-a-chip" technologies for synthetic biology, having accomplished the first gene synthesis in a microfluidic system. He was a former Technical Staff member in the Bioengineering Systems & Technologies group at MIT’s Lincoln Laboratory, founding member of the synthetic biology team, and now serves as the Director of the MIT Media Lab's Community Biotechnology Initiative. David is also a co-founder and managing faculty of "How To Grow (Almost) Anything, an international course on synthetic biology, and the founder of Metafluidics, an open repository for fluidic systems. Additionally, he is the founder and Board President of EMW Community Space, an art, technology and community center in Cambridge, MA. David is also an accomplished musician, having performed as a DJ, beat-boxer, vocalist, and rapper at hundreds of venues across the country. He is also an award-winning vocal arranger and produces his own music. His photography has been exhibited in numerous museums and galleries across the country, including the National Museum of American History at the Smithsonian and the Japanese American National Museum.