We are pleased to announce the appointment of Dr. Swati Choudhary as Shiru’s Head of Strain Engineering. Shiru’s mission is to feed people sustainably by leveraging machine learning and precision biology to identify and create ideal food proteins.
CEO and founder Jasmin Hume noted, “We have a huge opportunity to transform the ingredients space, but this only happens if we’re producing high quality, natural protein ingredients with high efficiency. Swati has a tremendous amount of experience in bringing fermentation-derived products to market via optimized biological systems. We’re so excited to have her join us as Head of Strain Engineering at Shiru.”
Swati is passionate about identifying and scaling up transformative products and technologies which benefit health, global food supply, and the environment. “It’s a great privilege to join the team at Shiru, combining machine learning with precision fermentation to bring much-needed world-class functional proteins to the market,” she said.
Swati is a synthetic biologist with 12 years of experience in engineering microbial strains for the production of proteins, natural products, and sustainable chemicals. She received her Ph.D. from The University of Texas Southwestern Medical School at Dallas and completed her Postdoc in synthetic biology at the University of Minnesota. Before joining the team at Shiru, Swati led the engineering of methanotrophic bacteria at Calysta, creating lactic acid and protein-based nutritional products from natural gas. Before Calysta, she led strain engineering teams at BioAmber, where she worked on the production of bio-based succinic acid via yeast fermentation as an alternative to sourcing this platform chemical from petroleum feedstock.
In her spare time, Swati plays the sitar and cooks up experiments in her kitchen. On weekends you can find her engaged in enthusiastic discussions with her book club, or eagerly exploring the great outdoors.
