Get to know Paul
In addition to being an avid hiker/backpacker, father of three, and partner to one, Paul is an experienced and accomplished biotech leader with 33 years of experience developing and transferring fermentation, cell culture, and recovery processes.
Paul led Amyris Process Development for 18 years, managing a team of up to 95 scientists, associate scientists, and project managers in US and Brazil. Highlights include the development of platform, advanced precision Saccharomyes fermentation process for long-term, high KPI production and recovery of dozens of products – 15 of which were scaled-up and commercialized. Paul also managed a successful partnership with BioMADE, coordinating the execution of 10 different projects over 4 years with tens of millions of partnership funding to deliver representative samples and technology.
Before that Paul was a hand-on scientist and engineer at Chiron (12 years) and Johnson&Johnson (3 years), learning the fundamentals of effective Process Development, Technology Transfer, & Scale-up, while assisting in the transfer of 5 “large-molecule” products to commercial scale with a variety of organisms, including E. coli, Pichia, Corynebacterium fermentation & CHO cell culture and early DSP recovery operations.
Now he leads Berkeley Bioprocess, collaborating with CROs, green chemical, and alt food companies to …
- build better lab-scale process systems. What is the ultimate scaled-down fermentation tool?
- probe the scalability of a process for a novel organism. Berkeley BioProcess is coaching the team to find best PD path to reduce COGS & scale up
- build a Technoeconomic analysis tools to …
- identify which products make sense to target
- identify good opportunities to cut production costs & streamline operations
- develop a scalable DSP process in with a challenging matrix
- and in general, hone team focus & strategic direction
In total, Paul has successfully scaled-up 20 different small-molecule, protein, and carbohydrate fermentation and recovery processes from the 0.5-10L scale to toll manufacturers at scales up to 225 m3 around the world, including Italy, France, Spain, The Netherlands, Brazil, and the US.
Paul is skilled in the development fermentation and cell culture processes with standard organisms (E. coli, Saccharomyces and CHO) as well as less common ones (Pichia, Streptomyces, Corynebacterium).
And he’s developed creative approaches for the recovery of gas, liquid, and solid molecules, especially from Saccharomyces and E. coli fermentation broths