Sourced investment opportunities via the creation of investment thesis, market mapping, and my professional network. Performed due diligence including technical and financial analysis, expert interviews, and competitive landscape analysis, resulting in two seed-stage investments in collaboration with TPB partners.Worked closely with portfolio companies to assist with strategy, fundraising, and technical objectives including identifying and vetting a large adjacent market opportunity for a portfolio company and designing experiments to establish a proof-of-concept data package to enable strategic partnerships. Ideated dozens of concepts within our venture studio with the potential to be technology driven companies and vetted their potential to be NewCo’s resulting in detailed financial modeling, competitive analysis, and identification of potential founders for several.

Successfully led a team responsible for the delivery of the multi-million dollar DARPA (Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency) Living Foundries 1000 Molecule Program at Zymergen, aimed at the production of novel materials through biology. Responsible for overall strategy for program delivery encompassing both management of the team and technical execution of a highly cross-functional program including strain engineering and fermentation for the production of novel materials. Successfully achieved bio-production of >100 molecules and kilogram scale production of select materials, delivering on-time on program objectives. This work resulted in successful delivery against all program milestones.Led and performed collaborative ideation as well as de-risking and early product development work related to biology. This work was performed in partnership with application-specific teams, commercial experts, synthetic chemists, and polymer scientists and encompassed areas ranging from consumer care (cosmetics & skincare), polymer films, and adhesives and required high level of coordination with commerical teams.

Became responsible for computational workflows to design and manage creation of optimized production hosts. This included both writing and optimizing workflows across bioinformatics, protein modeling and optimization, as well as complex python tools to create and manage DNA and strains across vendors and our LIMS systems to ensure robust tracking of more than 20,000 defined strains and hundreds of thousands of potential strains generated through combinatorial approaches.

Responsible for design and wet-lab experiments aimed at engineering multiple microbial species for the production a wide variety of molecules with applications in the chemicals & materials space. This work included metabolic pathway design, data analysis and tracking, genetic construct design, strain construction, and phenotype analysis to improve the performance of the microbe via multiple via iterative cycles of Design-Build-Test-Learn, each supported by robotics and laboratory automation.

Focused on the application metabolic engineering and synthetic biology tools for the production of secondary metabolites. This work required multidisciplinary approaches spanning metabolic engineering / synthetic biology, fermentation (of both plant and microbial cultures), biochemistry, and enzymology. A primary focus of my work was the production of the paclitaxel precursors in microbes. One aspect of this research has focused on mechanistic investigations of a key bottleneck enzyme, followed by applications of the mechanistic understanding to protein engineering focusing on a terpene synthase and P450 gene, resulting in improved pathway selectivity and titers. Additionally, this work also includes pathway elucidation studies aimed at discovering plant enzymes which perform unknown steps in the pathway.My other has focused on methods to improve production that are generalizable to all isoprenoids. These methods include co-culture, improved high-throughput screening methods, as well as alternative host utilization to overcome specific obstacles to production; resulting in a currently licensed patent.

Instructed students in the use of bioreactors for microbial growth and its industrial applications. Explored various methods of culture including shake flasks, batch bioreactors, aerobic vs. anaerobic, fed-batch, and continuous flow bioreactors. Coursework also focused on purification of recombinant enzymes and evaluation of enzyme kinetics. This work culminated in a final project in which students produced a recombinant protein in E. coli, purified the protein, and characterized the purified protein.

Performed modeling to develop methods for the prediction of commercial unit performance from pilot plant data and performed analysis on pilot plant data to ensure proper operation and accuracy of results. This resulted in identification of biases introduced during pilot plant operation that caused results to differ from at-scale performance,

Performed research on rheology and bioprocessing with the goal of exploring the effects of different unit operations on the complex viscosity of algal cells and its potential for underground carbon sequestration.

Characterized process streams for the recovery of small molecule pharmaceuticals (polyketide antibiotics) produced though large-scale fermentation at one of the largest scale fermentation sites within the US. These studies enabled a deeper plant-wide understanding of carbon emissions and identified several areas for improvement in the recovery train.

Worked on a rotational basis resulting in ~13 months of a full-time engineering role at an API manufacturing site responsible for absorbable hemostats and alkaloid-based drugs. In this role I was responsible for identifying and troubleshooting process problems as well as areas for improvement. I also Worked as process operations support in order to ensure continued production and aided in the introduction of a new product and scale up of two existing products.

Worked with mammalian cell culture to model cell damage and rescue following ultrasound treatment to assess the potential of chemical compounds to treat traumatic brain injury. This work required the use of confocal microscopy and flow cytometry to quantify treatment effects in cell rescue in addition to standard mammalian cell culture techniques.

Duties included:- Diagnose complex mechanical issues with non-functional or low-functioning equipment.- Order parts and make repairs on equipment independently.- Make cost-benefit tradeoffs to establish cost of repair vs. purchase of new equipment.- Customer intake and communication on work tickets.Responsible for Managing:- All two-cycle engines (chainsaws, leaf blowers, etc)- Battery-powered tools (drills, table saws, etc)- Select four cycle engines (riding lawnmowers, push lawnmowers, etc)