text: *  Poolman is ISI highly cited researcher in microbiology. He has published over 275 peer-reviewed papers in international scientific journals, which have been cited more than 25,000 times. His H-index (Google Scholar) is 83, and he holds four patents. Poolman shares his findings with wide audiences through newspaper, radio and TV appearances. In 2012 Schrauwers and Poolman wrote the book Synthetische Biologie: de Mens als Schepper (Synthetic Biology: Man as a Creator) to convey the developments in synthetic biology to a lay audience.