Storyteller.
Inventor.
Community Builder.
Book me to speakHire me to consult
Booking now · SF · will travel
Who’s this guy
Biopunk. Founder. Algae wrangler.
I build the infrastructure that lets more people do biology. I founded Spira, which turned engineered algae into pigments and materials that shipped at industrial scale. I co-founded the Biopunk Community, a network of independent labs, and I run the Haus Fund and its accelerator.
Somewhere in there I got legislation passed in Virginia.
- gene editing
- bioprocess + photobioreactors
- lab technique
- PCB design
- microcontrollers
- multi-axis CNC
- laser cutting
- 3D printing
- Python
- web dev
- technical writing
- photography
Book the set
Four ways to book me.
Advice
Strategy, R&D direction, new materials — and getting hard science in front of a buyer.
Talk it through →The residency
Coaching for scientists who have to become founders.
I was a biologist who had to learn to sell, hire and raise money. I got it wrong in public for about six years. This is standing time to get it wrong faster, in private, with someone who has already made the specific mistake you are about to make.
- One session $350 Sixty minutes on one problem. You get my notes after, so the thinking does not evaporate.
- Monthly $1,500/mo Two calls a month and me on text in between, for the things that will not wait a fortnight.
- The quarter $4,000 Three months, every other week. Long enough to actually change how you run.
How it starts: a free twenty-minute fit call. Tell me what you are stuck on. If I am not the right person I will say so and point you at someone who is. Rates flex for students, nonprofits and community labs.
A degree in biomedical engineering. Kairos and Future Founders fellow.
What I actually care about: solving basic physical needs with simple biological design, and putting the tools of biotechnology in more hands. I live in San Francisco, play music, and go on space analog missions.
Receipts
Three words are cheap. Here’s the work.
Storytelling
I sell strange ideas to normal people.
At Spira the product was pond scum. My job was to make BMW, Colgate, Hanes, Wrangler, Clorox, Giffard and Molson–Coors want it — a story a buyer could repeat to their own boss without flinching. The same trick funded a COVID lab that was still a sketch.
- 7 household brands shipped with
- A patented beverage — a drink you can watch grow
- $100,000 in 14 days for a lab that didn’t exist
On your stage: one uncomfortable idea, one object people can hold, one thing to do on Monday.
Invention
I build the thing, not the deck.
A patented photobioreactor. Ultrasound that ages spirits in days at California Shine. Since then: mycelium masonry, an EEG device, an open-source lab that ships from $40.
- Patents on a beverage, a bioreactor, an algal engineering system
- ~80% off the cost of aging spirits
- 4,096 patients/day from the COVID lab
In an engagement: prototypes, a bill of materials, a route to a buyer. Not a slide saying “explore partnerships”.
Community
Rooms, not audiences.
I founded Cellsius, a nonprofit lab, and co-founded IndieLab before it. Now it’s Biopunk: a lab, a house, hackathons anyone can walk into, and microgrants for first experiments.
- 250 members, 2 labs on $60k raised
- $200,000 in kind for a lab with a $4k budget
- 124 community labs mapped across ~45 countries
The useful part isn’t the launch party. It’s what keeps people coming in month nine.
Tradition
Old rituals, new biology.
Most of what I invent is an old practice with the technology swapped out. Toothpencil is the miswak stick, a thousand years old, rebuilt as a pencil. The other half is inventing rituals outright: a Taco Bell Triathlon, a Nic Cage film festival, a space-pirate tiki bar.
- A 1,000-year-old toothbrush, shippable
- A dozen invented rituals — races, festivals, tastings
- 79 analog astronaut sites catalogued
People don’t adopt new biology because it’s new. They adopt it when it slots into something they already do.
Day jobs
Who has been paying me.
- SpiraCo-founder & CEO
- Cellsius Community LaboratoryFounder & president
- Deep Science VenturesHead of strategic partnerships, agriculture — ten portfolio companies, five new agtech startups built around biodiversity
- 3cBioCo-founder & director of research
- California ShineFounder & CTO
- Betabox LabsConsultant
- ViV Design GroupLead scientist
- Indie LabCo-founder & treasurer — set up the 501(c)(3) the lab still runs on
The back catalog
Hardware, wetware, and one tourniquet.
Things that exist outside a slide deck.
Electric Sky
A natural blue dye grown from engineered algae, in food and on clothing for Wrangler and Hanes.
read →Patented photobioreactor
A reactor and an algal engineering system, run across 83 farming partners producing 550 metric tons.
Patented spirulina beverage
The drink that made the local paper: spirulina that didn’t taste like a pond.
read →A COVID lab in a shipping container
Robotic diagnostics, taken to a CLIA director for an FDA filing.
read →Growing edible algae on the moon
Crowdfunded, and presented to a room of people who build space habitats.
read →Ultrasonic fast-aging rig
Barrel-quality spirits in days instead of years, sold as a $120k contract.
calishine.co →Mycological masonry
Grown brick, meant to replace concrete, ceramic and asphalt.
One-handed tourniquet
For the case where the other hand is the problem.
Set list
Talks I can give tomorrow.
Each comes from something I built, broke or sold.
Making pond scum desirable
Selling the unfamiliar to conservative buyers. They leave with the sequence.
Innovation · brand · foundersThe decentralized factory
Eighty-three farms, five time zones. Production on other people’s land.
Supply chain · climate · agrifoodEveryone gets a bench
Why access beats credentials, and what 250 untrained people built.
Universities · civic · museumsInventing traditions
Why a ridiculous annual race beats a content calendar.
Community · culture · brand20–45 minutes, a panel, a workshop, or a few days building on site. San Francisco, happy to travel, remote is fine. Also asked about crisis engineering and what survives a purchasing department.
“Algae to Disrupt the Supply Chain” — the 83-farm argument, in full.
Tour dates
Stages played.
- 2024SynBioBeta (also 2016)
- 2023Biohack the Planet (also 2018)
- 2023Analog Astronaut Conference (also 2022)
- 2023NerdNite
- 2022SXSWOpen Pharma Foundation
- 2020XPRIZEBiohacking
+ 20 more stages
- 2020Catalyst Biosummit
- 2020North Houston Space SocietyAlgae on the Moon
- 2019MIT Biosummit (2017–2019)MIT Media Lab
- 2019AgInnovation Showcase
- 2019Abundance 360Future of Food
- 2018Algae Biomass Summit
- 2018ILSI Annual Meeting
- 2018Meeting of the Minds
- 2018Farm Bill briefingFFAR
- 2018Nutrition Capital Network
- 2017SXSWInfinite Food with Microbes
- 2017Thought For Food Summit
- 2017New Harvest
- 2017Aglanta
- 2017MAVA TechBuzz
- 2016Cambridge CUTECCircular economy
- 2015Stanford Epicenter
- —One Million Cups Richmond
- —Presentation Party Night
- —Virginia State UniversityGuest lecture
Also teaching: MIT’s How To Grow Almost Anything (’24, ’25), iGEM judge, Nucleate, Thought For Food, GAP Summit.
Press clippings
Prizes, fellowships, press.
- TCS Pitch for Purpose — Winner 2021
- Extreme Tech Challenge — Winner 2023
- Ignite22 — Winner 2019
- Halcyon — Fellow 2017
- MIT SOLVE — Finalist 2017
- NSF SBIR — Phase I 2020
- NASA iTech 2020
- Con X Tech Prize 2018
- FoodTech 500 2021
- Richmond Inno — 25 Under 25 2016
- VCU — 10 Under 10 2019
Written about in:
From the pit
What this actually looks like.
Labs, benches, odd objects and the occasional space analog mission.
Taking bookings
Let’s build something worth talking about.
Tell me the date, the audience, or the decision you’re stuck on.