PHYCOBLOOM - Key Persons
Aranza leads the Metabolic Engineering Team, whose main goal is to design an algal strain with increased free fatty acids for biofuel production. She has a PhD in Molecular Biology, as well as extensive experience in photosynthesis innovation for crop security.
As CTO, Ian sculpts our development roadmap and oversees all of our research and hiring. His academic background saw him infect tomatoes, synthesise fluorescent probes, and extract parasites from scampi, all whilst getting a PhD from Cambridge in biology.
He has a PhD from Cambridge. He has been genetically engineering algae for a decade and specialises in biochemistry and evolutionary biology.
Our CEO John focuses on establishing the big picture vision for Phycobloom while overseeing technical projects and leading on all things commercial. With a PhD in Metallurgy and Energy Materials, he is a rare non-biologist in our midst.
He has a DPhil from Oxford. With a background in materials science, he is passionate about creating sustainable energy systems.
Ekta leads on developing a genetic toolkit for sustainable algae oil production. She holds a PhD from Technische Universität Dresden and her previous research, for which was awarded the prestigious Alexander von Humboldt Research Fellowship, covered Molecular biology, Biochemistry and Synthetic biology.
Emily is Phycobloom's Operations Lead, playing a pivotal role in steering the company towards success. Her responsibilities range from streamlining internal processes to fostering collaborative efforts with external stakeholders. Her background in biochemistry has previously provided her with the tools to run operations for a biotechnology park.
Florence is developing an in-vitro platform to screen thousands of transporter protein combinations, selecting the most promising candidates for transformation into algae. While completing her PhD in Molecular Biology at Imperial, College London she left her mark by characterising a novel gene which was named after her: FLOR-1!
Francesca is developing a genetic toolkit to engineer algae for sustainable oil production. She holds a Master's degree in biotechnology, and has previous industrial experience of algal cultivation.
Isobel is developing techniques for the genetic engineering of algae, using bioinformatics to study the genomes of strains of interest. She recently completed her DPhil at the University of Oxford, where she studied the effect of plant immune responses on recombinant protein production.
Joe is developing an inducible biocontainment system to prevent the escape of genetically-modified microalgae. He has a background in biochemistry and, for his MSc, he studied genetic engineering strategies and the environmental adaptations of extremophilic microorganisms.
Mariana is part of the Metabolic Engineering Team, where she is optimising algae for the production and export of free fatty acids. She holds a PhD in biological oceanography, where she focused on developing molecular tools for a non-model, lipid-rich marine microbe.
Nanakow is a Postdoc Microbiologist. He is developing Phycobloom's microalgae-bacteria co-culture screening platform. He holds a PhD in Biomolecular Sciences and has extensive experience with protein purification and characterisation.
Oscar works with the Metabolic Engineering Team to increase the basal content of lipids within our algae with the goal of converting this into usable free fatty acids. He holds a Master's degree in Biosciences, with a specialism in plant molecular biology, which he harnessed in his previous experience at a molecular diagnostics startup.