SynBioBeta Speaker
Richard Kenny
Hawkwood Biotech Partners
Founder & Managing Partner
After completing his thesis in bioengineering of enzymes for the production of specialty chemicals at University of Oxford, Rich spent the early part of his career in investment banking with Numis Securities in London, funding early stage companies. He moved to California in 2009 to study for an MBA at UC Berkeley. Joining Solazyme in 2011, Rich established Solazyme’s business analytics department, responsible for market analysis, strategy, and deal structuring for all of Solazyme’s business development activities. Prior to founding Hawkwood, Rich worked as product line director for AlgaPrime DHA, Solazyme’s highly successful omega-3 product.
SynBioBeta 2026 Tickets are Live
Confirmed Speakers
Sessions Featuring
Richard
This Year
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Biomanufacturing
The Road to Commercial Scale: Capital and Market Demands Beyond the Pilot Plant
Scaling bio-based products to commercial production requires balancing technical readiness with market and financial realities. This session examines the capital investments, regulatory planning, and supply chain strategies necessary to move beyond the pilot stage. Experts will share lessons on aligning production capacity with demand forecasts, managing operational risk, and structuring partnerships that unlock funding and market access. Attendees will gain practical insights into navigating investor expectations, scaling efficiently without compromising quality, and making strategic decisions that ensure products can succeed commercially while meeting evolving market needs and sustainability goals.
Purchase Pass
Featuring
Per Falholt
21st.BIO
CSO, Co-founder
Launched ~200 enzyme products, industrial biotech scale-up expert
Vanderlei Bellettini
ADM
VP Precision Ferm. Ops
Bioprocess scale-up veteran turning fermentation into real-world products
Richard Kenny
Hawkwood Biotech Partners
Founder & Managing Partner
Techno-economic analysis for the bioeconomy
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Biomanufacturing
The Road to Commercial Scale: Capital and Market Demands Beyond the Pilot Plant
Scaling bio-based products to commercial production requires balancing technical readiness with market and financial realities. This session examines the capital investments, regulatory planning, and supply chain strategies necessary to move beyond the pilot stage. Experts will share lessons on aligning production capacity with demand forecasts, managing operational risk, and structuring partnerships that unlock funding and market access. Attendees will gain practical insights into navigating investor expectations, scaling efficiently without compromising quality, and making strategic decisions that ensure products can succeed commercially while meeting evolving market needs and sustainability goals.
Purchase Pass
Featuring
Per Falholt
21st.BIO
CSO, Co-founder
Launched ~200 enzyme products, industrial biotech scale-up expert
Vanderlei Bellettini
ADM
VP Precision Ferm. Ops
Bioprocess scale-up veteran turning fermentation into real-world products
Richard Kenny
Hawkwood Biotech Partners
Founder & Managing Partner
Techno-economic analysis for the bioeconomy
Session lineup still growing
Purchase Pass
Featuring
Speaker Coming Soon
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Human Health
From Cells to Patients: Solving the Scale Mismatch in Virtual Biology
Drug discovery often measures biology at the cell level while interventions work at the tissue, organ, or whole-patient scale. This mismatch can make accurate cell-level predictions irrelevant in the clinic. This session dives into strategies to bridge that gap: multiscale modeling that nests single-cell dynamics within organ-level simulations, spatial transcriptomics that preserve context, and surrogate models that translate cell-level outputs into clinical biomarkers. Speakers will ask: how do we ensure virtual biology reflects not just what cells do in isolation, but how biology behaves in the real complexity of patients?
Purchase Pass
Featuring
Speaker Coming Soon
