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. His responsibilities include overseeing scientific and technology development, defining Arzeda’s business strategy and securing financial and human resource necessary for its execution. Alexandre is an internationally recognized protein design expert. He was the early developer of Arzeda’s protein design software Archytas™ for enzyme design, and is leading the development of Arzeda’s metabolic pathway design software Scylax™. He is deeply involved both with Arzeda’s technology platform development and its applications to the commercial world. 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 high throughput screening 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 health to combating global warming. Alexandre holds a Ph.D. in Biochemistry from University of Washington, a M.S in Computer Science (Artificial Intelligence) and BS in Applied Mathematics, both from University of Paris, and a M.Eng. from ENSTA/ParisTech.
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PhD - Co-founder, Chief Executive Officer and VP Research
Alexandre Zanghellini co-founded Arzeda and leads the team as CEO and Vice President, Research. His responsibilities include overseeing scientific and technology development, defining Arzeda’s business strategy and securing financial and human resource necessary for its execution. Alexandre is an internationally recognized protein design expert. He was the early developer of Arzeda’s protein design software Archytas™ for enzyme design, and is leading the development of Arzeda’s metabolic pathway design software Scylax™. He is deeply involved both with Arzeda’s technology platform development and its applications to the commercial world. 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 high throughput screening 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 health to combating global warming. Alexandre holds a Ph.D. in Biochemistry from University of Washington, a M.S in Computer Science (Artificial Intelligence) and BS in Applied Mathematics, both from University of Paris, and a M.Eng. from ENSTA/ParisTech.
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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.
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.
Daniela Grabs,
PhD – Co-founder, VP Operations
Daniela Grabs co-founded Arzeda and currently serves as its Vice President, Operations. Her responsibilities include managing resources and people across the laboratory and overseeing the development of Arzeda’s high-throughput protein analytics platform, including laboratory automation and workflow development. Her pioneering work in this area has enabled Arzeda to build the most efficient protein design screening capability to date, with the ability to routinely screen 10,000s computationally designed proteins every month.
Daniela believes that the combination of advanced software with highly automated high-throughput experimentation 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.
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PhD – Co-founder, VP Operations
Daniela Grabs co-founded Arzeda and currently serves as its Vice President, Operations. Her responsibilities include managing resources and people across the laboratory and overseeing the development of Arzeda’s high-throughput protein analytics platform, including laboratory automation and workflow development. Her pioneering work in this area has enabled Arzeda to build the most efficient protein design screening capability to date, with the ability to routinely screen 10,000s computationally designed proteins every month.
Daniela believes that the combination of advanced software with highly automated high-throughput experimentation 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.
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Yih-En Andrew Ban,
PhD – VP Computing
Yih-En Andrew Ban joined Arzeda at inception and leads the computational design and software development teams as Vice President, Computing. In particular, he oversees computational infrastructure and algorithms development to improve the accuracy and throughput of Arzeda’s computational protein design platform. Since his tenure as VP Computing at Arzeda, Andrew and his team have pioneered new methodologies with the objective of building a scalable and automated protein design infrastructure applicable to any industrial protein engineering application.
Andrew has been the lead developer of Arzeda’s Archytas™ protein design software, Burst™ high-throughput cloud computing infrastructure and Scribe™, Arzeda’s automated DNA writing software, and remains involved in the development of these critical tools. Before joining Arzeda, Andrew developed methods for vaccine design using computational protein design and studied structural biology using the tools of computational topology & geometry. Andrew holds a PhD in Biochemistry from Duke University, and a BS in Mathematics and BS in Biology, both from the University of Texas at Austin.
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PhD – VP Computing
Yih-En Andrew Ban joined Arzeda at inception and leads the computational design and software development teams as Vice President, Computing. In particular, he oversees computational infrastructure and algorithms development to improve the accuracy and throughput of Arzeda’s computational protein design platform. Since his tenure as VP Computing at Arzeda, Andrew and his team have pioneered new methodologies with the objective of building a scalable and automated protein design infrastructure applicable to any industrial protein engineering application.
Andrew has been the lead developer of Arzeda’s Archytas™ protein design software, Burst™ high-throughput cloud computing infrastructure and Scribe™, Arzeda’s automated DNA writing software, and remains involved in the development of these critical tools. Before joining Arzeda, Andrew developed methods for vaccine design using computational protein design and studied structural biology using the tools of computational topology & geometry. Andrew holds a PhD in Biochemistry from Duke University, and a BS in Mathematics and BS in Biology, both from the University of Texas at Austin.
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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.
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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.
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Michael Cockrem,
PhD – Head of Engineering
Michael Cockrem leads engineering efforts at Arzeda, with a focus on developing scalable downstream processing, techno-economics analyses and robust production plant designs. He works closely with Arzeda’s team of chemists and chemical engineer and interface with the strain engineering and process engineering teams.
Michael brings over 30 years of experience in engineering processes for the production of bio-based chemicals. He was instrumental in developing the technology scaled up by DuPont-Tate&Lyle for the production of 1,3-propanediol and BioAmber’s succinic acid 30kt/y plant. He also was involved in process development for LanzaTech, Lygos, Provivi, and others. Michael is passionate about bringing sustainable and performance chemicals to market and contributing to reducing the carbon footprint of our industrial processes. He believes that precise rigorous engineering is needed in addition to advances in biotechnology. Michael holds a PhD in Chemical Engineering from University of Wisconsin and a BS in Biotechnology from Massey University in New Zealand.
PhD – Head of Engineering
Michael Cockrem leads engineering efforts at Arzeda, with a focus on developing scalable downstream processing, techno-economics analyses and robust production plant designs. He works closely with Arzeda’s team of chemists and chemical engineer and interface with the strain engineering and process engineering teams.
Michael brings over 30 years of experience in engineering processes for the production of bio-based chemicals. He was instrumental in developing the technology scaled up by DuPont-Tate&Lyle for the production of 1,3-propanediol and BioAmber’s succinic acid 30kt/y plant. He also was involved in process development for LanzaTech, Lygos, Provivi, and others. Michael is passionate about bringing sustainable and performance chemicals to market and contributing to reducing the carbon footprint of our industrial processes. He believes that precise rigorous engineering is needed in addition to advances in biotechnology. Michael holds a PhD in Chemical Engineering from University of Wisconsin and a BS in Biotechnology from Massey University in New Zealand.