Meet 10 Women Who Are Leading The Synthetic Biology Revolution

In the last decade, we have witnessed biology bring us some incredible products and technologies: from mushroom-based packaging to animal-free hotdogs and mRNA vaccines that helped curb a global pandemic. The power of synthetic biology to transform our world cannot be overstated: this industry is projected to contribute to as much as a third of the global economic output by 2030, or nearly $30 trillion, and could impact almost every area of our lives, from the food we eat to the medicine we put in our bodies.

The leaders of this unstoppable bio revolution – many of whom you can meet at the SynBioBeta conference in Oakland, CA, on May 23-25 – are bringing the future closer every day through their ambitious vision, long-range strategy, and proactive oversight. These ten powerful women are shaping our world as company leaders, biosecurity experts, policymakers, and philanthropists focused on charting a new course to a more sustainable, equitable, clean, and safe future.

Emily Leproust, CEO & Co-founder, Twist Bioscience

As an early pioneer in the high-throughput synthesis and sequencing of DNA, Emily Leproust has dedicated her life to democratizing gene synthesis to catapult the growth of synthetic biology applications from medicine, food, agriculture, and industrial chemicals to DNA data storage. She was one of the co-founders of Twist Bioscience in 2013 and is still leading the expanding company as CEO. To say that Twist’s silicon platform was a game-changer for the industry is an understatement. And it is no surprise that Leproust was recently honored with the BIO Rosalind Franklin Award for her work in the biobased economy and biotech innovation.

Renee Wegrzyn, Director, ARPA-H

Renee Wegrzyn was appointed by President Biden in 2022 to serve as the first director of the Advanced Research Projects Agency for Health (ARPA-H) where she is leading transformative research to provide health solutions for all, and it is hard to imagine a better suited person for the job.

Wegrzyn has strong roots in the synthetic biology industry, having served as a vice president of business development at Ginkgo Bioworks and head of innovation at Concentric by Ginkgo, a pandemic response program launched in 2020 that uses synthetic biology to outpace infectious diseases through biomanufacturing, vaccine innovation, and large-scale bio-surveillance. Her previous work at DARPA’s Biological Technologies Office on enhancing biosecurity and supporting the domestic bioeconomy has earned her the Superior Public Service Medal. With leadership like that, our bio-future is in safe hands.

Mary Maxon, Executive Director of BioFutures, Schmidt Futures

Mary Maxon is the Executive Director of BioFutures at Schmidt Futures, an initiative focused on maximizing the potential of biotechnology toward a circular bioeconomy. Schmidt Futures has put together a special task force that authored the influential report “The U.S. Bioeconomy: Charting a Course For a Resilient and Competitive Future” and established mechanisms for funding of important research projects.

Maxon has spearheaded these and other efforts geared toward establishing the U.S. as the world’s biomanufacturing leader. For example, she served as Assistant Director for Biological Research at the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy where she was the principal author of the Obama Administration’s National Bioeconomy Blueprint. She also serves as a member on multiple committees at government and private science policy institutions.

Jennifer Holmgren, CEO, LanzaTech

Jennifer Holmgren is CEO of the revolutionary carbon recycling company, LanzaTech, which she has been leading since 2010. With over 50 U.S. patents and more than 30 scientific publications under her belt, Holmgren is, no doubt, one the most influential leaders in the bioeconomy. Under Dr. Holmgren’s guidance, LanzaTech is working on developing a variety of platform chemicals and fuels – including the world’s first alternative jet fuel – derived from industrial waste gases.

Georgia Lagoudas, Senior Advisor for Biotechnology and Bioeconomy, White House Office of Science and Technology Policy

The U.S. government has prioritized the bioeconomy as one of the nation’s strategic areas of growth over the next few decades. Putting action behind words, the White House has established the National Biotechnology and Biomanufacturing Initiative and set bold goals for U.S. biomanufacturing.

Georgia Lagoudas, Senior Advisor for Biotechnology and Bioeconomy at the White House Office of Science & Technology Policy, has been spearheading these efforts, including putting together a joint report from five federal agencies that contains specific strategies for climate change solutions, food and agriculture innovation, supply chain resilience, human health, and broad technological advances across all sectors.

Sarah Carter, Principal, Science Policy Consulting

Sarah Carter is the Principal at Science Policy Consulting LLC where she focuses on societal and policy implications of emerging biotechnologies, including issues of responsible innovation, biosafety, and biosecurity. She has worked at multiple government agencies, industry, academia, and non-profit institutions, such as the Policy Center of the J. Craig Venter Institute and the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy. She is a former AAAS Science and Technology Policy Fellow and a former Mirzayan Science and Technology Fellow of the National Academies.

Amy Trejo, Director, R&D – Responsible Materials Innovation, Procter & Gamble
PG
Company

Amy Trejo worked for the multi-national consumer products company Procter & Gamble since 1998. For the past 4 years, Amy has been a part of the Corporate R&D Open Innovation Team, working to bring the best of external technologies into P&G to accelerate and strengthen their R&D programs. In her role, she is bringing innovative synthetic biology solutions into mainstream products, which we will hopefully start seeing on store shelves soon.

Aoife Brennan, CEO, Synlogic

Aoife Brennan says she is passionate about drug development, novel platforms, and the power of science to change lives. Having served at the director level at multiple pharmaceutical companies, she is now President and CEO of Synlogic Inc., a clinical-stage synthetic biology company that is developing an entirely new way to treat diseases using living therapeutics. Synlogic engineers well-characterized probiotics to deliver their therapeutic benefit to the patient in real-time and make the molecules right where they are needed in the body. These engineered organisms, called Synthetic Biotics, are being investigated as treatments for metabolic and immunologic diseases like phenylketonuria (PKU), homocystinuria (HCU), enteric hyperoxaluria (EH), and gout.

Nicole Richards, CEO, Allonnia

As the CEO of Allonnia, Nichole Richards is working on solving one of our toughest challenges – waste. Having worked in water treatment, mining, and chemical and pharmaceutical industries, Richards is using her experience to approach the problem differently: by harnessing biology for sensing, remediation, and upcycling of waste materials. For example, one of Allonnia’s applications is the bioremediation of oil sands by using naturally occurring microbes to break down the toxic molecules that leech and pollute the environment. And not just
just
break down, but convert those waste streams into upcycled, valuable materials. Talk about turning trash into treasure!

Claire Aldridge, Chief Strategy Officer, Form Bio

Claire Aldridge is a new Chief Strategy Officer of Form Bio who says she has been training for 20 years for this role. The company that aims to make bioinformatics workflows accessible to scientists across the vast range of synthetic biology applications was spun out from Colossal Bioscience when its founders realize what an enormous impact the products they built could have on the industry. And Aldridge stepped up to the challenge of executing that vision. Her extensive background in the business of biotech, as well as the worlds of philanthropy and venture capital, has enabled her not only to see the promise of emerging technologies but also communicate their potential to investors and stakeholders.

Of course, there are many others who are working tirelessly to bring us one step closer to a sustainable bio-based future. It is thanks to the combined efforts of these leaders that we can rest assured – we will be leaving our planet a better place than we found.

Thank you to Katia Tarasava for additional research and reporting on this article. I’m the founder of SynBioBeta and some of the companies I write about, including Synlogic Inc., LanzaTech, Twist Bioscience, Procter & Gamble, Allonnia, and Form Bio, are sponsors of the SynBioBeta conference and weekly digest.