Lee Cronin is a Chemist. He is the Regius Professor of Chemistry at the University of Glasgow and the Founder & CEO of Chemify. He is known for his approach to the digitization of chemistry and developing digital-to-chemical transformation known as Chemputing which can turn code into reactions and molecules. He has also developed a new theory for evolution and selection called assembly theory which aims to quantify and explain how selection can occur in chemistry before biology. Lee is also exploring how chemical systems can compute, and what is needed for the evolution of intelligence, as well as designing a new type of computational system that uses information encoded in chemical reactions and molecules.

During the fellowship Lee is going to explore the evolution of populations of minimal chemical systems capable of displaying intelligence as well as imagine how alien life might emerge using different chemistry to that found on earth.