Getting to know...Dwayne Holmes, Director of Responsible Research and Innovation
Dwayne Holmes is our new Director of Responsible Research and Innovation, a role created to help us advance our updated mission to "maximize the positive impact of cellular agriculture." He joins us from Mosa Meat, where he led quality assurance and regulatory work. Based out of the Netherlands, Dwayne will be expanding New Harvest’s work in Europe and Asia.
Getting to know...John Pattison and Ian Johnson of Cultured Decadence
John Pattison and Ian Johnson co-founded Cultured Decadence, a cellular agriculture seafood company developing cell-cultured lobster, in 2020. Based in Madison, Wisconsin, Cultured Decadence is one of the only cellular agriculture companies in the Midwest, and the only company in the United States targeting shellfish. At the beginning of April, Cultured Decadence raised $1.6 million in a pre-seed round and received the first state funding for a cellular agriculture company (1).I spoke to John—a former New Harvest intern and the current treasurer on our board of directors—to hear about his experience starting a company. Ian also joined the call to share his technical perspective.
Getting to Know...Stephanie Bailey, Development Manager
Stephanie Bailey is New Harvest’s new Development Manager. A University of Alberta alum like Isha, Stephanie brings a vision to grow and strengthen New Harvest’s generosity network.
Getting to know...Yadira Tejeda-Saldana, Research Collaborations Director
Yadira Tejeda-Saldana is New Harvest’s new Research Collaborations Director. Her food science and policy background comes to the team at the perfect time as New Harvest starts to look at maximizing the positive impact of cellular agriculture.
Getting to know...Vanessa Haley-Benjamin, Research Fellow
Vanessa Haley-Benjamin is a New Harvest Research Fellow whose work began on August 1, 2020. A Bahamian native, her research centers around the development of cultured mollusks.
Getting to know...Dr. Paige Wilcoxson, COO
Dr. Paige Wilcoxson joined the New Harvest team in June 2020 as the COO. With her background in psychology and social justice, she’s brought a unique perspective to help progress New Harvest’s work and mission.
Getting to know...Morgan Ziegelski, Science Communications Intern
Morgan Ziegelski is a Science Communications Intern at New Harvest. A second year chemical engineering major at Georgia Tech passionate about cell ag, she’s the new voice of the New Harvest Instagram and TikTok.
Getting to know...Gaby Floratos, Science Communications Intern
Gaby Floratos is one of the New Harvest Science Communications Interns. The new voice of the New Harvest Twitter and Linkedin, Gaby is bringing her technological background and passion for cell ag to the team.
Getting to know...Breanna Duffy, Research Operations and Outreach Director
Breanna (Bre) Duffy is New Harvest’s new Research Operations and Outreach Director. Her years of tissue engineering experience bring technical skills and a drive for change to the team.
New Harvest Grants First Dissertation Award
At the start of the pandemic, New Harvest granted Mike McLellan our very first dissertation award to support a novel workaround for animal serum in the production of cultured meat. Unlike other serum-free media projects, Mike isn’t trying to develop a replacement “substance” to Fetal Bovine Serum (FBS). Instead, Mike is developing a muscle culture “trophic support cell” (TSC) that will provide the same growth factors typically provided by animal serum. This TSC could be co-cultured with muscle cells to precipitate their differentiation into muscle tissue. Theoretically, this will function as a proof of concept for serum-free tissue culture. I called Mike to learn about his research, but the conversation snowballed into an interrogation of Winston Churchill’s fame within cellular agriculture and discussion about how COVID-19 radicalized Mike’s vision for cultured meat’s role in food security.
Getting to know...Alexis Garrett, New Harvest Research Fellow
Alexis Garrett is a New Harvest Research Fellow developing scaffolds for cultured meat at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. With unique insight into the manufacturing challenges of cell culture, Alexis is using her engineering background to solve problems related to speed and texture in cultured meat production.
Getting to know...Stephanie Kawecki, New Harvest Research Fellow
Stephanie Kawecki is a New Harvest Research Fellow pioneering a method for growing muscle and fat cells together at UCLA. Having previously interned at Beyond Meat, where she compared compounds in the company’s signature plant-based meat products to compounds in actual meat, Stephanie has experience in both the plant-based and cell-based meat industries.
Getting to Know...Natalie Rubio
In addition to being one of New Harvest’s first interns, Natalie Rubio is a New Harvest Research Fellow working on a PhD in Cellular Agriculture under Dr. David Kaplan at Tufts University. Before relocating to Boston for her PhD studies, Natalie got a taste of the San Francisco tech scene working at Quartzy, and she also helped out in the early days of Perfect Day Foods (then Muufri) while completing her B.S. in Chemical and Biological Engineering at the University of Colorado Boulder. Read on to get to know Natalie!
Getting to Know... Yuki Hanyu of the Shojinmeat Project
The Shojinmeat Project is an inter-disciplinary collaborative project aimed at the development of cultured meat in Japan. The project consists of a number of volunteers working in a variety of "clusters" in both scientific and non-scientific subject areas, giving rise to the startup Integriculture Inc.Erin had the opportunity to chat with Yuki Hanyu, founder of the Shojinmeat Project, about the history and vision behind the initiative. Yuki works full-time at the Shojinmeat Project and Integriculture Inc., and lives just south of Tokyo, Japan.
Getting to Know... Mike Selden
We’re #blessed to have Michael Selden join New Harvest as our intern this fall! Mike holds a degree in Biochemistry and Molecular Biology from Umass Amherst and has taught Chemistry to high schoolers as well as having worked in labs dealing with invasive fungi that threaten our food supply and the biomechanics of mantis shrimp and cancer biology. As a lover of science and an environmentalist, Michael believes in using all of the technology that we have to help grow our food supply while shrinking our environmental impact.
Getting to Know... Joshua March
For our first donor profile in our Getting to Know series, we sat down with Joshua March, CEO and Founder of Conversocial, a provider of software which enables companies to deliver customer service in real time through social media. Josh is a longtime cultured meat enthusiast who became a donor and dedicated member of the New Harvest community after finding out about us in 2015.
Getting to know... Marianne Ellis, Biochemical Engineer
Marianne Ellis is a Biochemical Engineer at the University of Bath with expertise in integrated bioprocess design for large-scale cell culture. Her work involves the design and fabrication of the bioreactors in which cultured meat cells grow!
Getting to know... Daan Luining, New Harvest Intern
Daan Luining is one of only a handful of cultured meat researchers in the world. He spent the first year of his Masters program working in Dr. Mark Post’s lab (Maastricht University, The Netherlands). Now, Daan is completing the MBA portion of his degree in New York; using his expertise to implement scientific strategy for New Harvest.
Getting to know... Abi Glencross, New Harvest Research Fellow
Abi Glencross is a New Harvest Research Fellow and PhD student in London working to create “steak without cows.” Abi talks to us about the difficulties in growing muscle tissues larger than .5mm, designing bioreactors, and blurring the line between art and science.
Getting to know... Symon, Bohdan, Tucker, and Nick, New Harvest's Re-designers
New Harvest launched a new website and visual presence today. Symon, Bohdan, and Tucker of ALSO Collective helped us put it together, with the help of Nick's amazing illustrations.