Jake Gonzales
PhD, Plant Biology, UC Davis
Jake is interested in remediating pressing environmental and energy concerns using Synthetic Biology and Metabolic Engineering approaches. His research under Dr. Atsumi aims to synthesize high value chemical commodities from carbon pools that have been traditionally untapped or underutilized and includes engineering cyanobacteria to efficiently convert CO2 to useful chemicals that are currently produced from petroleum.
Jake has worked on projects with MARS-Wrigley where he learned considerations of making a product realistically scalable. He found this an entirely new challenge that piqued his interest in the business side of biotech, leading him to a role as a science consultant with Steel Perlot. Here, he gave insight into worthy investments related to chemical commodities produced from photosynthetic microorganisms. Jake believes that there is no question food tech is going to become increasingly relevant as our society faces an uncertain climate and an ever-increasing increasing population.
Venture Capital Host
