Synbiobeta last week was awesome! Maybe one of the best conferences I have attended.
Not only were there talks by great scientists like Paul Stamets 🍄 and Craig Venter (picture below), but I reconnected with fermentation people at Genencor/DuPont/IFF, and BASF. Furthermore, I was able to meet many other innovators/service providers/investors during the conference. I feel very blessed to have spent two decades in this field.
Although summarizing what I saw in bullet points is difficult, here it goes:
• The conference felt very commercial in comparison to when it started, and not in a bad way. This is an indication that biotech has evolved over the past decade from the abstract or medical to the very practical.
• The ecosystem is vibrant. There are many start-ups, service providers, innovators and investors from different countries all under one roof. To be candid, I was gladly surprised to see a couple of the Fortune 500 companies I worked for in the conference.
• AI 🧠 is impacting everything including biotech. Although there are a lot of initiatives only time will tell which ones are the ones that will pan out commercially.
Huge shout-out to Ginkgo Bioworks, Inc. and SynBioBeta for providing our start-up with a grant so that we could attend. I won't tag names, but building a start-up, just like raising a child 👶, takes a village.
#synbio #synbiobeta #biotech #fermentation
Scientist bij Those Vegan Cowboys - Pet Photographer
2moYou have gained an amazing colleague