The current set of non-animal proteins is largely non-functional. The industry typically selects the supplier with the lowest price, cleanest flavor, and most marketing potential. This results in products lacking in texture. It also makes development work more expensive by forcing trial-and-error approaches to product development.

Possible solutions to this include in mapping alternative processing and key functional properties with a special focus on changes to size, charge, or other physical chemistry properties (mechanistic models). This would make more information available for CPG companies looking to source the right ingredient and support the development of a better class of ingredients.

Two major challenges face companies wishing to successfully sell alternative animal products. These are flavor and texture. Nearly all companies are still forced to rely on flavor houses to improve the flavor of their products. This adds to the cost and, unfortunately, fails to satisfy most consumers due to the limited complexity currently available. Texture can be more easily addressed but many companies find the options difficult to apply due to labeling concerns or because of technical gaps. Traditional (bulk) fermentation has the potential to address both of these problems and improve nutrition (this is very likely to become a key consumer demand).

There are many opportunities to leverage the complexity of the various organisms that can transform our foods / ingredients. Currently looking to document and categorize basic strain substrate interactions.

Open to working on precision fermentation projects.

Interested in practical scientific and business applications to leverage AI for the food industry. Looking to build on previous successes with ingredient optimization and substitution prediction.

Interested in developing, optimizing, and testing functional properties, material characterization, and process settings for foods and ingredients. Also interested in performing replication studies for select publications within the food industry.