Distinguished Professor Ian Paulsen has a diverse and impressive background in microbiology but also in all the fields that surround it such as genomics and synthetic biology. He always seem to be involved on the cutting edge of science! In the early days of his academic career he was discovering biological mechanisms of multiple drug resistance to antibiotics. In the 1990s during the genomics revolution, when the sequencing of the first human, bacterial, plant and fungal genomes were conducted, he was heavily entrenched in this and working at one of the world leading sequencing facilities, the institute for genomics research. In 2014 he was awarded an Australian Laureate Fellowship for studying marine bacteria and their importance in the marine food web. That year, he was also awarded the Distinguished Professor award at Macquarie University in recognition of his renowned work in genomics, systems biology and environmental microbiology. At the end of 2019 he was awarded to lead the Centre of Excellence in Synthetic Biology at Macquarie university. Just recently he has been elected as a fellow to the Australian Academy of Science for his pioneering work on drug transporters that confer antibiotic resistance in bacteria.