What Happened?

San Diego, CA-based Sapphire Energy has Promoted Matthew Croughan as Chief Technology Officer  

About the Company

About the Person

Matthew Croughan was the George B. and Joy Rathmann Professor and Director of the Amgen Bioprocessing Center at Keck Graduate Institute. He founded the Bioprocessing focus track at KGI in 2006, and with the help of his colleagues at KGI and friends in industry who often serve as adjunct faculty, built it into one of the largest masters-level programs in bioprocessing, with approximately 100 graduates to date. It has a unique emphasis on recruiting and educating the next generation of business leaders in bioprocessing. He recently won the Student Choice Faculty (Top Teaching) Award for 2012-2013, and will keep a 1-day per month appointment at KGI as Industry Professor while serving as CTO at Sapphire. Since 1998, Dr. Croughan has also worked as an independent consultant providing expert guidance on biopharmaceutical and biofuels process development and manufacturing to over fifty five firms.

Previously, Dr. Croughan was the chief scientist for Genentech’s cell culture facility in Vacaville, CA, built for the production of therapeutic antibodies. Earlier in his career at Genentech, he developed the first licensed fed-batch cell culture process, a breakthrough platform technology now used throughout the biopharmaceutical industry, especially for the economical production of high-dose blockbuster antibodies. Dr. Croughan has a Ph.D. from MIT and a BS from UC Berkeley, both in chemical engineering.