Our Team
Unparalleled Industry Leadership
With hundreds of combined years of industry experience, our leadership team is relentlessly focused on driving our mission of solving some of today’s biggest challenges through protein design innovation.
EXECUTIVE LEADERSHIP
Alexandre Zanghellini
PhD – Co-founder, Chief Executive Officer and VP Research
Alexandre Zanghellini co-founded Arzeda and leads the team as CEO and Vice President, Research. Alexandre is an internationally recognized protein design expert and was the early developer of Arzeda’s protein design software Archytas™ for enzyme design, as well as Arzeda’s metabolic pathway design software Scylax™. Before Arzeda, Alexandre led bioinformatics at Cellectis (NASDAQ: CLLS), a publicly traded protein engineering and gene editing company.
Alexandre strongly believes the convergence of big compute, machine learning, DNA synthesis and lab automation represent an inflexion point in human history, and that the rationale design of new proteins will play a key role in solving some of humanity’s biggest societal challenges – from improving human well-being to combating climate change. Alexandre holds a Ph.D. in Biochemistry from University of Washington, a M.S. in Computer Science (Artificial Intelligence) and B.S. in Applied Mathematics, both from University of Paris, and a M.Eng. from ENSTA/ParisTech.
Ken Barrett
MBA, MS – Chief Business Officer
Ken Barrett entered the industrial biotech sector when he joined Diversa’s BD team in August 2006, responsible for supporting Diversa’s commercialization strategy with a focus on developing internal capabilities and launching new products. At Diversa/Verenium, he led several commercialization projects and partnerships, including those in bioenergy, oilseed processing, animal feed, detergents, and oilfield services. After the BASF acquisition he continued managing the BD team. Upon the creation of the BASF Enzymes business unit in 2018, Ken was tapped to lead 3rd Party Business Management and Collaborations, with a specific focus on managing 3rd party collaborations in animal feed enzymes that had to be “firewalled” from the BASF animal nutrition business. Ken’s general focus in industrial biotech has been to translate cutting edge science into profitable commercial business opportunities, either through organic development or via external partnerships.
Prior to BASF, Ken was a co-Founder and Managing Director of Trident Partners, LLC, a private equity and management firm focused on small and medium sized businesses. Before that, he served as a consultant at Bain & Company. He began his career at Mitsubishi Motors Corporation in 1989 in Japan, where he spent five years and learned Japanese.
Ken received a M.S. in Applied Biosciences from the University of Arizona in Tucson, Arizona, a M.B.A. degree from Harvard Business School in Boston, Massachusetts and a B.A. in Engineering Sciences from Dartmouth College in Hanover, New Hampshire.
Scott Fabro
Senior Vice President of Business Development & Food Ingredients
Fabro has three decades of experience working in commercial strategy and operations for specialty ingredients. Most recently, Fabro served as the Vice President of Business Development at biotechnology ingredient company, Geltor, Inc. There, Fabro led commercial execution of bioactive ingredients into the food, beauty and personal care industries. Fabro, who has extensive experience with Rebaudiosides – a key component of sugar replacements, also spent eight years at Cargill, serving as Global Business Director for High Intensity Sweeteners. During his time at Cargill, Fabro also served as Global Product Director for two other functional ingredient businesses and represented the company as a board member of the International Stevia Council. In addition, Fabro spent three years with Evolva Group, SA, where he was Chief Operations Officer and before that, Chief Commercial Officer. He has also held a number of other senior level positions with companies in the global ingredient space including Sweet Harvest Foods and Kerry Inc., among others.
Sanjay Pal
MBA - Chief Financial Officer
Sanjay Pal leads Finance & Administration at Arzeda, with a focus on developing the company’s financial planning & analysis capabilities, supporting the business development teams, and overseeing the accounting & administrative functions.
Sanjay’s background includes a diverse, yet complimentary set of experiences over 20 years with venture-backed companies commercializing new technologies in wireless, and more recently new process technologies that address the environmental sustainability of commodity markets such as biofuels, hydraulic fracturing, wastewater treatment, and phosphoric acid production. Sanjay holds an MBA from Columbia Business School and a BS in Industrial Engineering & Operations Research from UC Berkeley.
Alex Patist
PhD – Chief Operating Officer
Alex Patist is a seasoned industrial bioprocess development and manufacturing executive with 25+ years of experience turning cutting-edge science into reliable, large-scale production across food, beauty, nutraceuticals, (bio)materials, and sustainable chemicals. Currently a fractional COO at Paebbl and most recently COO at Geltor, and previously SVP at Bolt Threads with earlier leadership roles at Genomatica and Cargill, Alex has led end-to-end scale-up—fermentation, downstream recovery, tech transfer, and global toll manufacturing—to bring novel bio-based products to market. Alex believes that rigorous process design and data-driven scale-up – and scale-down - are the keys to delivering sustainable and economically viable innovations at industrial scale. He holds a Ph.D. in Chemical Engineering from the University of Florida, an M.S. from TU Eindhoven, and a B.S. from Hogeschool Utrecht (Netherlands).
View Alex’s LinkedIn page
BOARD MEMBERS
Daniela Grabs
PhD – Co-founder, Board Director
Daniela Grabs co-founded Arzeda and previously served as its Vice President, Strategic Projects. She played a pivotal role in devising and implementing Arzeda’s precision lab testing infrastructure, including workflow optimization and robust analytics method development.
Daniela believes that the combination of advanced software with precision lab testing is poised to change the way we do biotechnology and create tremendous value for Arzeda and its partners. Daniela was a Postdoctoral Fellow at University of Washington. She holds a Ph.D. in Biochemistry from the University of Zürich and a Diploma from ETH Zürich.
Doug Cameron
PhD – Independent Board Director
Doug Cameron is an advisor, investor and board director focused on sustainable technologies across agriculture, food and energy. He is co-president of Monolith Holdings (formerly First Green Partners) and serves on the boards of Arzeda, DMC Biotechnologies, Switch Bioworks and BioWish Technologies, and is a board observer at Geltor. He also advises Bunge, Mojia Bio and several startup and venture firms. In 2025, Doug was elected to the National Academy of Engineering.
From 2017 to 2020, Doug was Senior Managing Director at the U.S.–China Green Fund (now the Asia Green Fund). Earlier, he was Chief Scientific Officer at Khosla Ventures and a Managing Director in the cleantech investment banking group at Piper Jaffray. Before his investing career, Doug was Director of Biotechnology and Chief Scientist at Cargill and a professor of chemical and biological engineering at the University of Wisconsin–Madison, where his work centered on synthetic biology and fermentation.
Doug also serves on the boards of the Foundation for Food and Agriculture Research (FFAR) and Monarch Joint Venture, and on the Science Advisory Board of MIT’s Center for Enhanced Nanofluidic Transport (CENT). He holds a B.S.E. in Biomedical Engineering from Duke University and a Ph.D. in Biochemical Engineering from MIT.
Bill Baum
Chairman of the Board, Independent Director
Bill Baum has served as Chairman of Arzeda’s Board of Directors since January 2017 and brings more than three decades of leadership in industrial biotechnology, specialty chemicals and business development. Bill is chairman of the Board of Gevo Inc (NASDAQ: GEVO) and serves on the board Watt Companies and Leaf Resources. From 2010 to 2014, he was Chief Business Development Officer at Genomatica, where he helped build partnerships to commercialize sustainable chemicals.
Before Genomatica, Bill spent 13 years at Diversa (later Verenium), holding roles of increasing responsibility — from Vice President, Sales & Marketing to Senior Vice President, Business Development and ultimately Executive Vice President, Business Development — supporting the company’s growth in industrial enzyme solutions. Earlier in his career, he served as Vice President of Global Sales & Marketing at International Specialty Products and held a variety of U.S. and international executive roles at Betz Laboratories.
Larry Page
PhD - Board Director
Larry Page is a member of Arzeda’s Board of Directors and a Managing Director at Lewis & Clark AgriFood, where he is responsible for fund management, capital formation, leading investments and serving on portfolio company boards. His work focuses on scaling technologies at the intersection of biology, food and agriculture.
Larry joined Lewis & Clark AgriFood in 2016 after operating roles in science-based startups. He helped build PierianDx, a clinical bioinformatics company, where he worked across both the laboratory and commercial teams. Earlier, he was an Entrepreneur-in-Residence at the Nidus Partnership and served as Chief Technology Officer at Terra Biologics, leading efforts to commercialize cyanobacteria-based biofertilizers.
Larry holds a Ph.D. in Biochemistry from Washington University in St. Louis, where his research focused on the molecular mechanisms of photosynthetic light harvesting. He earned a B.S. in Biochemistry from the University of Missouri–Columbia, where he conducted undergraduate research in plant molecular biology.
Yanniv Dorone
PhD – Board Director
Yanniv Dorone is a member of Arzeda’s Board of Directors and brings a combination of plant biology expertise and venture investing experience in agriculture, food and industrial biotechnology. He is a Senior Vice President at Fall Line Capital, where he evaluates and supports tech-driven opportunities in agri-food.
Yanniv completed his Ph.D. in Biology at Stanford University, where he studied abiotic stress sensing in plants, focusing on how seeds detect water to trigger germination. This work was published in and featured on the cover of Cell and earned him Stanford’s Charles Yanofsky Prize for “most outstanding graduate student working in the field of molecular biology.” He was also named to Forbes 30 Under 30: Science & Healthcare (Europe) and recognized as an American Society of Plant Biologists scholar.
Earlier in his career, Yanniv spent over two years at AgFunder, a Silicon Valley VC focused on AgTech and FoodTech, where he led deal sourcing, due diligence and portfolio support. He holds B.S. and M.S. degrees in Biology from the École Normale Supérieure de Lyon, where he was admitted with a “Normalien” fellowship, and is a Patent Agent with the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office.
View Yanniv’s LinkedIn page
Brian Loeb
B.S. - Board Director
Brian Loeb is a member of Arzeda’s Board of Directors and co-leads Conti Ventures, the early-stage investing arm of Continental Grain Company focused on food, agriculture and restaurant technologies. Since 2016, he has helped build a portfolio of innovative foodtech and agtech companies and currently serves on the boards of Myco Technologies, Plasma Nutrition, EarthOptics and Arzeda, while also supporting several other Conti Ventures investments.
Conti Ventures is a joint effort of Continental Grain Company — a privately held food and agribusiness investor with more than 200 years of history in grain trading and animal protein — and partners across the food and ag value chain. In addition to venture investing, Brian helps oversee Conti’s partnership with Boulder Food Group, which backs emerging better-for-you CPG brands.
Before joining Conti, Brian was an investment banker in J.P. Morgan’s Financial Institutions Group. He holds a B.S. in Mechanical Engineering from Yale University.
View Brian's LinkedIn page
SCIENTIFIC ADVISOR
David Baker
Scientific Advisor & Co-Founder, Arzeda
David Baker is a globally recognized pioneer in protein design and a co-founder of Arzeda, one of the first spinouts from his lab at the University of Washington. In 2024, he was awarded the Nobel Prize in Chemistry for his revolutionary work in computational protein design.
As the Director of the Institute for Protein Design, David has spearheaded innovations that are reshaping industries from medicine to sustainable manufacturing. He is a Howard Hughes Medical Institute Investigator, the Henrietta and Aubrey Davis Endowed Professor in Biochemistry, and a member of the U.S. National Academy of Sciences.
With over 600 publications, 100+ patents, and the co-founding of more than a dozen biotech companies, David's groundbreaking work laid the foundation for Arzeda’s mission to transform industries through tailor-designed proteins.
Invest in the Future of Protein Design
Our investors provide unparalleled expertise in life sciences, computational design, materials, food, and beyond. Join us as we pioneer enzyme design and uncover the endless possibilities of proteins together.
