Europe’s #1
synthetic biology
conference

Bio

Prantar Tamuli is the founder of Tattva, a biotechnology platform leveraging systems biology and cellular intelligence of cyanobacteria to develop carbon-negative engineered living materials. He is the recipient of the Manton Prize 2020 from the British Phycological Society for the invention of a novel solid-state cyanobacterial biomanufacturing technique.

He is an interdisciplinary scientist and a PhD scholar at the Advanced Centre for Biochemical Engineering, University College London, where his research focused on native phenotypic programming, solid-state photobioreactor engineering, and the process intensification of photosynthetic living material production for industrial applications. Prior to bioengineering, he worked for over a decade as a professional architect designing large-scale, ecologically regenerative infrastructure. His trajectory spans synthetic biology, bioprocess engineering, and sustainable construction, forming the basis of Tattva’s long-term vision: to create a biologically grown built environment through programmable microbial systems that replace extractive materials with regenerative, living materials. 

Bio

Dr Alicia Showering is the CEO and Co-Founder of BugBiome, an agtech start-up discovering bioinsecticides from microbes. She holds a PhD focused on how microbes and their metabolites influence insect attractiveness. BugBiome has developed a phenotypic screening platform powered by engineering biology to identify microbial strains that modulate insect behaviour, enabling the discovery of novel insecticides for sustainable crop protection. 

Bio

Ben Wilding is Co-Founder and CEO of Sun Bear Biofuture who are bioengineering the future of ingredients. His background is in business and technology, having run a software consultancy in London for 10 years and several other businesses. He holds a Masters degree in Sustainability and Behaviour Change. He leads on the company strategy, culture and collaborations with strategic partners at Sun Bear Biofuture. He is passionate about having a positive impact on the planet through biotechnology. 

Bio

Harsh Amin is the CEO and Chief Scientific Officer at Ivy Farm Technologies, where he has led the company’s transformation since 2023 from a research-focused startup into a commercially driven food production business. He also serves as CEO and Board Member of a stealth-mode biopharmaceutical company.

With over 15 years of leadership experience in the biotech and biopharma sectors, Harsh has held key roles at ReNeuron, Evox Therapeutics, and Lonza. He has a strong track record of translating scientific innovation into commercial platforms, with expertise spanning regenerative medicine, exosome-based therapeutics, CHO biology, and cell line development.

His academic research at University College London and Imperial College London focused on stem cell biology and musculoskeletal disorders. Harsh brings a multidisciplinary approach across cell biology, media development, analytical sciences, and translational medicine.

Outside of work, he enjoys playing cricket with his two children, both avid fans of the Indian and English cricket teams.

Bio

Christopher Voigt, PhD, is the Department Head of Biological Engineering at MIT. He is an expert in Synthetic Biology and his lab has applied genetic engineering to problems in agriculture, health, computation, medicine, chemicals/materials, national security, and infrastructure. He holds the Daniel I.C. Wang Professorship and is Co-Director of the Synthetic Biology Center.

He received his BSE in Chemical Engineering from the University of Michigan (1998) and PhD in Biophysics from Caltech (2002). He is a founder of Pivot Bio (microbial agricultural products), Asimov (human cell synthetic biology), and Fieldstone (national security and biotechnology). He is a Board Member of the Novo Nordisk Foundation. He serves on the science advisory boards of DSM–Firmenich, Bolt Threads, Empress Bio, Aanika, Senti Bio, Axcella, Robigo, Anthology Bio, and Twist Bioscience. He is an equity partner at DCVC Bio, Bio-innovation, and Pillar. He has been honored with a National Security Science & Engineering Faculty Fellowship (NSSEFF), Bush Fellows Research Study Team (BFRST), and is the Director of the Army Center for Synthetic Biology.

He has been honoured as a Sloan Fellow, Pew Fellow, Packard Fellow, NSF Career Award, Vaughan Lecturer, MIT TR35, Schmidt Innovation Fellow, and SynBiobeta Entrepreneurial Leadership Award.   

Bio

Joe Price is the Founder of Evolutor. Evolutor builds and deploys unique genetic toolkits and lab hardware to leverage the power of top-down evolutionary microbe development in new ways.

The team’s technological philosophy is built on the fact that biology is fundamentally not an engineered system. Despite the major advancements in synthetic biology, it remains true that only an extremely marginal portion of microbial diversity is directly engineerable. By better harnessing evolution, Evolutor seeks to make the bottleneck of un-engineerability entirely obsolete.

To achieve this ambition, Evolutor is generating microbes into a small number of targeted verticals. Their flagship bacteria are evolved to rapidly convert end-of-life tyres into fermentation feedstock for new biopolymer and biochemical production. Beyond this flagship, Evolutor will scale to target other challenging wastestreams as they expand core microbe evolution technology into construction of the world’s first automated evolutionary biofoundry.

Bio

Pedro is a cancer biologist and entrepreneur with a long-standing interest in the studying and targeting of the tumour microenvironment (TME). He obtained his PhD from the University of Cambridge, where he initially developed new 3D models to study angiogenesis in solid tumours. Pedro then moved to the MD Anderson Cancer Center in Houston, Texas, for a Postdoctoral Fellowship studying spatial interactions between stromal components and immune cell infiltration in solid tumours. His observations made him decide to build innovative solutions to tackle this problem, leading him to return to the UK and co-found Neobe, engineering bacteria to remove barriers to drug infiltration in cancer patients. He has since grown the company and raised £3.5M in equity and non-dilutive funds, enabling the establishment of its engineered bacterial therapeutics platform, with two assets currently in pre-clinical development. 

Bio

Gustaf is the CEO and Co-Founder of Scindo, a company pioneering AI-guided enzyme design to enable sustainable chemical manufacturing from renewable and upcycled feedstocks. He earned his DPhil in organic chemistry and chemical biology from the University of Oxford under the supervision of Professor Ben G. Davis, where his research focused on the discovery and engineering of novel enzyme functionalities for selective C–H activation and C–C bond cleavage — work that laid the foundation for Scindo’s technology platform. Prior to this, he completed his MChem at Oxford with a dissertation on the incorporation of unnatural amino acids into natural enzymes. 

Before founding Scindo, Gustaf worked in finance and private equity, including as Head of Research at a London-based PE fund specialising in the acquisition and transformation of precision engineering businesses. Combining deep scientific expertise with commercial insight, he now leads Scindo with a mission to transform the chemical industry by unlocking nature’s catalysts. 

Bio

Nigel Scrutton is the Chief Scientific Officer and Co-Founder of C3 Biotech. He leads the company’s scientific strategy at the intersection of chemistry, biology, and engineering. He plays a pivotal role in shaping C3’s technology platform, driving innovation in next-generation biomanufacturing, and guiding the company’s long-term vision and global impact. 

Nigel is a Fellow of the Royal Society and has served as Director of the UK Future Biomanufacturing Research Hub, which he founded in 2019. Previously, he was Director of the Manchester Institute of Biotechnology (2010–2019), during which time the Institute was awarded the Queen’s Anniversary Prize for Higher and Further Education (2018–2020) for its national leadership in biotechnology and biomanufacturing. 

Nigel also advises the UK Government on the strategic development of biotechnology in both civilian and defence contexts. 

Bio

David Venables, PhD, is serial biotechnology entrepreneur and leader. He has taken companies from creation through to acquisition or IPO and products from early development to commercialisation. 

He is CEO of Laverock Therapeutics, a gene-silencing company with a uniquely powerful technology for the development of programmable advanced therapies to tackle major diseases, where he has led the company through foundation, seed funding and corporate development.  

He was previously President, AskBio Europe, having joined following the acquisition of Synpromics, where he was CEO and led the company through two rounds of funding prior to acquisition. He was VP-CMC for Nightstar Therapeutics, a gene therapy company acquired by Biogen, CEO of Antara Therapeutics, where he raised private funding and led an IPO in Australia, and CEO of Ark Therapeutics. 

David serves on the Boards of Concinnity Genetics, Axol Biosciences and NovalGen. He is also an Honorary Professor at Edinburgh University supporting company collaboration and entrepreneurship in The College of Medicine and Veterinary Medicine. 

Bio

Daniel has been working on bringing technology and business together for most of his adult life. Daniel completed his bachelor’s at the University of Oxford and PhD at Imperial College London. His PhD project focused on cultivating unculturable bacteria and screening them for antibiotics. 

Daniel has an MSc in Finance from IE Business School Madrid and worked in investment banking for Barclays Capital before helping Albion Ventures evaluate spinouts from UCL. He Co-Founded Bactobio in 2020 to harness breakthroughs in genomics, machine learning, and bioengineering to cultivate previously unculturable microbes and mine them for antimicrobials for agriculture and healthcare – for a greener and safer future. 

Bio

Kyoko leads Kyomei in pioneering molecular farming, transforming crop leaf biomass to sustainable bio-factories for food ingredient production. With over 15 years of expertise in plant science, particularly leveraging diverse techniques to study protein stability, proteolysis, and protein–chemical interactions, she has contributed to approaches enabling high-yield production of complex molecules in plants. Kyoko earned her PhD in Applied Biological Chemistry from the University of Tokyo and spent over five years at the University of Oxford’s Department of Plant Sciences, where she explored plant proteins and small molecule interactions using proteomics and chemical biology. During her academic tenure, she was recruited by Syngenta to develop a screening platform bridging discovery and real-world agriculture. Her research background and passion for sustainable food solutions inspired her entrepreneurial journey with Kyomei. At SynbiTECH 2025, she will share insights on advancing molecular farming to build resilient, low-carbon food systems.  

Bio

Clive Cookson has worked in science journalism for the whole of his professional life. He left Oxford University with a First Class Honours degree in chemistry and, after training on the Luton Evening Post, joined Times Higher Education – first as science correspondent in London and then as North America editor in Washington DC. 

Clive returned to London as technology correspondent of the Times and moved to BBC Radio as science and medical correspondent. He went back to print journalism at the Financial Times first as technology editor then in 1991 as science editor, leading a writing team covering science and health, pharmaceuticals and biotechnology.  In October 2023 Clive became the FT’s senior science writer. He has won numerous science journalism awards, including British Science Writer of the Year 2022.  

Bio

Maria Savino holds a PhD in Cellular and Molecular Biology and a Master in Business Administration. She has been Sales Manager for biotechnology companies within an international scope for more than 10 years. She joined Beckman Coulter Life Sciences after the acquisition of Labcyte Inc in 2019, and has occupied roles in marketing and business development. Today she’s focused on showing Beckman solutions as essential parts of the laboratory workflow in Biomanufacturing. 

Bio

Tim Davies is the Biologicals Technology Leader and a Distinguished Laureate at Corteva Agriscience focusing on the development and improvement of bioprocesses for the manufacture of crop protection products.  Tim took this role in 2022, having previously held the roles of Bioprocess Science and Technology Leader and Program Leader for Fermentation Technology at Corteva since 2021 and 2019 respectively.     

Tim has a BSc in Microbiology from the University of London and a PhD in Chemical Engineering from the University of Manchester Institute of Science and Technology.  Specialising in anaerobic fermentation technology he continued his professional development under Prof Lars Ljungdahl at the University of Georgia (UGA).  Having led Bioprocess development science at Aureozyme, a Georgia based technology start-up, Tim became director of the Bioexpression and Fermentation Facility at UGA in 2001.  In this role he collaborated with almost 200 different companies and research institutions over 10 years.  Concurrently he was a partner at Downstream Biotech Consulting Inc. and consulted for clients in the USA and Europe. 

In 2011 Tim became CTO of Green Biologics in the UK.  During his tenure GBL became the first industrial biotech company in 60 years to develop and implement a new ABE manufacturing process, retrofitting a Minnesota ethanol plant for acetone and butanol production and achieving commercial sales in 2017.  Tim then founded Rubus Scientific Ltd., specialising in technical strategy development, biomanufacturing development and scale up where he was Director until joining Corteva. 

Tim has been active in professional organizations, in particular the Society for Industrial Microbiology and Biotechnology.  He was on the SIMB Board from 2010-2016 and was President in 2015.  He was Program Chair of the SIMB Annual Meeting in Toronto in 2009 and has been Program Chair of the RAFT fermentation conference three times.  In 2019 he won the Charles Porter Award.  Tim has served on the Board and Scientific Advisory Boards of several companies and organizations.  He is currently on the SIAB for the DOE-funded Center for Bioenergy Innovation, the board of Heartland Bioworks (Midwest USA) and is a member of the Industrial Biotechnology Leadership Forum (IBLF, UK).   

Bio

Adrian joined Colorifix Ltd in 2021 and is Head of Regulation. In his day to day activities he works across the company with scientists, and the commercial and implementation teams to drive the company’s mission in building a global business by navigating the regulatory compliance challenges.

In the Civil Service, he worked with Sir David King on the GM Science Review and Lord Sainsbury on the development of regulations centred around nanotechnology and represented the UK & EU in the Climate Change adaptation negotiations under the UNFCCC. Adrian did his PhD at the University of Nottingham and post doctoral research at Michigan State University, USA, on the biochemistry and molecular biology of acyl carrier protein and its role in fatty acid metabolism in plants.    

Bio

Mark joined Lucideon in October 2012 and is a Chartered Chemist with a PhD specialising in synthetic and materials chemistry, sol-gel chemistry, formulation science, and controlled release technologies. He splits his time between supporting the Formulations team on active projects, assisting the commercial team in scoping new projects, and helping develop and grow new business areas, including biotech.

As well as contributing to the development of Lucideon’s iCRT technology platform (controlled release of actives and ingredients) and research programmes, Mark uses his materials chemistry expertise to lead on a range of client projects focused on materials synthesis, controlled release applications and formulation science across the pharmaceutical, consumer health, biotech, and advanced ceramic sectors.

Bio

Muriel Dewilde studied bioengineering at the University of Leuven in Belgium and worked 10 years as a process engineer at the European wheat plants of Tate & Lyle and Tereos, starting-up new industrial lines and coordinating pilot projects.

She became Business Development Manager at the Bio Base Europe Pilot Plant in Ghent, Belgium in 2010, at the start of its operations.

Since that time, she has managed a myriad of biotechnological scale-up projects for companies around the world in the fields of a.o. microbial proteins, cosmetics, nutraceuticals, ag tech products, fine chemicals and bioplastics.

Bio

Dr Edward Green is a microbiologist with a PhD in Biochemical Engineering from UMIST and over 25 years’ experience with anaerobic bacteria. He has pioneered technical improvements in microbial strain engineering and fermentation process development for industrial biotechnology.

Edward is also a biotech entrepreneur having founded Green Biologics in 2004, a world leading fermentation company manufacturing renewable chemicals. In 2014, he founded CHAIN Biotech, a microbiome Company developing live biotherapeutics focusing on orally delivered cancer vaccines.  In 2022, Edward joined NCIMB Ltd. as Chief Executive, a Scottish biotech company delivering innovative microbial technologies for a broad range of industrial applications.  Edward is a member of the Industrial Biotechnology Leadership Forum and mentor for early-stage companies in the Northeast of Scotland.