Research in my group takes a systems approach to chemical problems in soft matter, membrane biophysics and synthetic biology. Operating at the interface between chemistry and biology the common thread in our research is lipids and amphiphiles. Amphiphiles, molecules that are both hydrophobic and hydrophillic, have some intriging properties. In water they self-organise into complex structures; phospholipids, the building blocks of cell membranes are amphiphiles, DNA is amphiphilic and so are many proteins. Surfactants are amphiphiles and under the right conditions amphiphiles form lyotropic liquid crystals.