Christopher Oakes Email & Phone Number

Hi! I'm Chris, a marine biologist on an ongoing quest to harness technology and innovation in the service of ocean sustainability and restoration.My current adventure is at Reefgen, where I serve as CEO. With a team supported by the National Science Foundation, Schmidt Marine Technology Partners, Builders Vision, and the Grantham Foundation, we're pioneering automated coral and seagrass planting. Our groundbreaking technology outplants nursery-raised corals and seagrass 75x faster for seagrass and 30x faster for coral, enabling the blue economy to scale and accelerating marine restoration to meet the pace of environmental degradation. Reefgen's methods have been deployed in Hawaii, California, Indonesia, and Wales.I have worked in a diverse range of roles: as an environmental biologist, divemaster, sales, marketing, and product manager, diagnostics expert, and educator for both young and mature startups, plus a fortune 100 corporate. My interests and training are applied to aquaculture, immunology, infectious disease, robotics, underwater photography, and machine learning, all contributing to Reefgen's mission.I'm a proud alumnus of Occidental College and the University of Chicago Laboratory School and grew up in Chicago.Feel free to reach out if you want to learn more about Reefgen's work or get involved in our mission to restore our oceans!

Listed skills include Molecular Biology, Scuba Diving, Infectious Diseases, Marine Biology, and 26 others.