The Climate Biotech Podcast

On the most recent episode of the Climate Biotech Podcast, we are joined by Ginger Krieg Dosier, an architect-turned-biotech entrepreneur who created biocement at Biomason and is now building BIOME Consortia to accelerate biology's transition from thousands to billions of applications. Ginger's journey from NASA kid in Alabama to founding one of climate biotech's earliest companies reveals how architectural thinking translates surprisingly well to biological innovation. Ginger’s approac...

Biomanufacturing doesn’t fail for lack of clever biology; it stalls at the factory gate. We sit down with Biosphere CEO Brian Heligman to unpack how a materials scientist’s journey through batteries and perovskites led to a bold thesis for the bioeconomy: change the constraints of the bioreactor and you change everything downstream. Instead of miles of steam lines and fragile commissioning, Biosphere is betting on UV-sterilized stainless systems, modern automation, and a full-stack approach t...

Professor Pam Silver from Harvard Medical School joins us as a founding figure and legend in synthetic biology whose scientific path led from pioneering work on nuclear localization to co-developing the revolutionary "bionic leaf"—a system that combines artificial catalysts with bacteria to convert sunlight and CO2 into fuels and compounds at efficiencies far exceeding natural photosynthesis. Silver's perspective on synthetic biology's evolution from theoretical explorations to real-world app...

When Loren Looger walks into a room, he doesn't want recognition, he wants to make things that work. The creator of revolutionary, open-source tools that transformed how we visualize brain activity is increasingly turning his protein engineering expertise to formidable challenges in climate, including methane degradation. . Methane sits at the heart of our climate crisis as a greenhouse gas 80 times more potent than carbon dioxide. Yet nature has evolved only a few enzyme scapable of breakin...

Mining has essentially been the same for 5,000 years, just now with bigger shovels. Imagine if we could drastically increase mining efficiency and output for both the environment and national security. That's exactly what Dr. Esteban Gazel, a Costa Rican-born geochemist, and Dr. Buz Barstow, a physicist-turned-synthetic biologist, are working on at Cornell University. When these brilliant minds connected over rare earth elements and carbon storage, they realized that existing microorganisms ...

The solution to plastic waste looks different depending on where you stand in the world. While Northern Hemisphere biotech approaches to plastic recycling focus on high-temperature enzymes designed to regenerate plastic monomers (which works when you produce lots of plastic), Cesar's lab has engineered a completely different solution. Starting with microorganisms from Antarctica, his team uses AI and deep learning to design enzymes that work efficiently at low temperatures - not to recycle pl...

The global food system has a phosphorus problem that few people talk about. Unlike nitrogen, which cycles naturally through our atmosphere, phosphorus is mined from finite deposits and has no natural cycle. A massive 100-kilometer conveyor belt—visible from space—transports phosphate-rich rock from the Sahara Desert to ships waiting to distribute this critical resource worldwide. Any disruption to this supply chain would threaten global agriculture, yet when phosphorus runs off fields, it cre...

Cryptocurrency and climate biotechnology might seem like an unusual pairing, but Albert Anis, founding steward of ValleyDAO, is showing this combination has remarkable potential. Decentralized autonomous organizations (DAOs) are creating entirely new funding mechanisms for scientists working on our planet's most critical challenges. At the heart of ValleyDAO's approach is a radical rethinking of how intellectual property can be governed and commercialized. Through "IP NFTs" (non-fungible tok...

What happens when brilliant scientific innovation meets masterful storytelling? Marketing rarely tops the priority list for scientists and biotech founders who are deep in the technical challenges of making their innovations work. Yet without effective communication, even groundbreaking discoveries risk languishing in obscurity, unable to attract the talent, funding, and partnerships necessary to scale their impact. In this illuminating conversation, Dan Goodwin welcomes marketing expe...

How can biotechnology revolutionize heavy industries and convert carbon waste into a valuable resource? In this special cross-posted episode—from our friends Erum and Karl at the Grow Everything Biotech Podcast and Messaginglab—we feature Moji Karimi, co-founder of Cemvita, a company leading the way in carbon conversion technology. Moji shares Cemvita’s journey from a bold vision in industrial biotech to real-world solutions that repurpose carbon emissions into valuable products. From reshapi...

Join us as we explore the innovative world of protein engineering with Samuel Thompson. Samuel's work focuses on engineering proteins to function in organic solvents, environments that would be hostile to traditional cell-based life. This approach has significant implications for bridging the gap between the enzymes market and the trillion-dollar specialty chemicals market, potentially leading to decentralized chemical production with a much lower environmental footprint. In this episode, Sam...

How can protein science shape the future of food and climate solutions? Meet Anum Glasgow, a leading researcher at Columbia University, whose journey—rooted in her Pakistani heritage and a childhood of curiosity on the Jersey Shore—led her to the cutting edge of protein engineering. Anum shares how her fascination with protein folding evolved into groundbreaking research on designing multifunctional proteins and therapeutics. We explore the hidden elegance of nature’s self-folding systems and...