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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

In 2020, New Harvest welcomed 13 new grantees to our research community, bringing our total number of current researchers to 26. We were able to DOUBLE our research program—in a pandemic no less—thanks to the generous support of New Harvest donors.Without further ado...meet New Harvest's 2020 cohort of cell ag pioneers!

New Harvest is hiring for three new roles: Development Manager, Research Operations Manager, and Research Collaborations Director. Read more about the positions below!

New Harvest fellows Andrew, Natalie, and John hope their course materials can be a resource for students and educators at other institutions. 

This article was originally written by New Harvest Dissertation Awardee Mike McLellan for the American Association for the Advancement of Science "Science and Human Rights" 2020 student essay competition. It is republished here in full. by Mike McLellan 

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.

Every Tuesday and Thursday for the month of June, New Harvest will be live-tweeting cultured meat webinars hosted by the Cellular Agriculture Online Symposium. 

After almost three years on the New Harvest team, Kate is moving on from her role as Research Director to start Helikon Consulting. Kate will be filling a gap in the for-profit side of cellular agriculture, doing technical consulting and talent scouting in alternative proteins and cell-based meat.

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.