David Adler, Ph.D. Email & Phone Number

The alchemy of transforming a raw green coffee bean into an exquisite cup of coffee is what intrigues me. My coffee journey began watching the mysterious preparation of tiny cups of espresso served at Italian restaurants in the Brooklyn neighborhood where I grew up, to cappuccinos at Greenwich Village coffee houses. Becoming familiar with the coffee growing regions of the world by reading the names on the sacks of green beans that I unloaded as a longshoreman on the San Francisco docks. What began as a hobby roasting coffee, blossomed into a passion for the bean and a desire to learn all dimensions of the farm to cup story. In 2004 the Bainbridge Ometepe Sister Islands Association (bainbridgeometepe.org) introduced me to the coffee farmers in Nicaragua that I have now been working with for the last twenty years. Recently, with two partners, Roberto Mairena and David Mitchell, founded a coffee roasting business on the island of Ometepe, aimed at local economic development. Following a thirty something year career in biology (outlined below) I have turned my scientific eye to the subject of coffee. Along with my partner and spouse, Kris Carroll, we built a coffee roastery on Bainbridge Island, which is now the home of Pegasus Coffee, committed to quality in the cup.My research career was initially inspired by the question of how a single fertilized egg develops into a complete organism. In graduate school I adapted biochemical, quantitative microscopic and molecular biological methods to study features and mechanisms of gene regulation during early mammalian development. I spent twenty-five years investigating X-chromosome dosage compensation as a model system for studying the regulation of gene expression.

 Results of this research, along with those of gene cloning and physical gene mapping projects, were reported in 35 journal articles. At ZymoGenetics I discovered three candidate therapeutic proteins, including a novel human antimicrobial peptide.

Listed skills include Genomics, Molecular Biology, Biotechnology, Bioinformatics, and 38 others.