James Diggans is Vice President for Policy and Biosecurity for Twist Bioscience, a DNA synthesis company based outside of San Francisco. He holds a PhD in Computational Biology and Bioinformatics from George Mason University and has worked in target discovery, molecular diagnostic development and biodefense. At Twist, he created and leads the company's biosecurity program, is a key member of the company's government affairs and policy team and chairs the International Gene Synthesis Consortium, a trade industry organization dedicated to ensuring the safe and secure use of synthetic DNA technology worldwide.