JBEI publication “End-to-end automated microfluidic platform for synthetic biology: from design to functional analysis” published in 2016 has been selected as the Journal of Biological Engineering Publication of the Year. Gregory Linshiz, former Post-Doctoral Researcher at JBEI and Nathan Hillson, JBEI’s Director of Synthetic Biology Informatics, conceived the project that served as the basis of this paper. In the paper the authors present a programmable, multipurpose microfluidic platform and associated software and apply the platform to major steps of the synthetic biology research cycle: design, construction, testing, and analysis. The formal announcement of the award will be made at this year’s Annual Meeting of Institute of Biological Engineering (March 30 – April 1, in Salt Lake City, UT).