The team
Built at the intersection of synthetic biology, industrial process, and commercial strategy.
Kevin Xu, PhD
Co-Founder & CEO
Kevin is the Co-Founder and CEO of Fermeate with a PhD from Princeton in Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering. Prior to Fermeate, his work primarily focused on the biomanufacturing of flavonoids and complex molecules at scale.
Saurabh Malani, PhD
Co-Founder & CTO
Saurabh is the Co-Founder and CTO of Fermeate with a PhD from Princeton in Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering. Prior to Fermeate, his research focused on machine learning for biological process modeling.
Ben Mason, PhD
Senior Scientist
Ben is a Senior Scientist at Fermeate with a PhD from University of Miami who previously led client-facing strain improvement programs for Fortune 500 companies, scaling microbial development from lab to production.
Israel Figueroa, PhD
Senior Scientist
Israel is a Senior Scientist at Fermeate with a PhD from UC Berkeley with deep expertise in engineering microbes for industrial biomanufacturing across renewable chemicals, specialty ingredients, and amino acids.
Bill Dong
Director of Strategy & Partnerships
Bill is the Director of Partnerships and Strategy with background in developing strategic partnerhips between corporates and startups in food and biotech, with prior experiences in finance, banking, and private equity.
Advisors & board
José Avalos, PhD
Scientific Advisor
We're building something consequential.
Fermeate is a small team working on a problem that touches a significant fraction of global industrial biology. If you're a scientist, engineer, or operator who wants to work on something with real industrial stakes, we want to hear from you.
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