What Happened?
Rensselaer, NY-based SyntheZyme has Appointed Richard Gross as Chief Technical Officer
About the Company
SyntheZyme develops bio-based products and technologies with a unique and competitive cost/performance. We work closely together with our industrial partners for the manufacture and marketing of our bio-based commodity and specialty products for the global market. We seek to complement our core competencies with those of our strategic, industrial partners. The success of our business is based on our capabilities to structure and operate entrepreneurial partnerships. SyntheZyme’s scientists and engineers have a deep knowledge in chemistry, synthetic biology, fermentation engineering and materials science with process know-how
About the Person
Rich is the inventor of the concept of biobased ω-hydroxyfatty acid monomers and their polymers from triglyceride feedstocks. He discovered new technological approaches for amplifying the biological activity and fine-tuning the physico-mechanical properties of surfactants produced by microbes. Rich founded SyntheZyme in 2008 to pursue major opportunities in developing biocatalytic routes to bio-based monomers, polymers and surfactants. At SyntheZyme, Rich leads the core biocatalytic chemistry technology and discovery group. Rich has 30 years experience working at the interface between biocatalysis, chemistry and polymers. He has held faculty positions at the University of Massachusetts (Lowell campus) and the Polytechnic Institute of NYU (formerly “Brooklyn Poly” where he is the Herman F. Mark Professor. In August of 2013 he move to Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute (RPI) to assume positions of Professor in the Chemical and Biological Science and Bioengineering Departments. He also is a Constellation Chair of Biocatalysis and Metabolic Engineering in RPI’s Center for Interdisciplinary Science. He was President of the U.S. Society for Biodegradable Plastics in 1998 and is well known as a leader in that field. In 2003, he received the Presidential Green Chemistry award for his work on biocatalytic routes to polymers. In 2001 he founded and serves as Director of the NSF Industrial/University Cooperative Research Center for Biocatalysis and Bioprocessing of Macromolecules at RPI where he enjoys the participation of numerous industrial collaborators. He has over 400 publications in peer reviewed journals cited about 7000 times, edited 5-books, and has been granted or filed a total of 22 patents. Rich received his Ph.D. at “Brooklyn Poly” in 1986 working with Mark Green and was a postdoctoral fellow with Bob Lenz and Clint Fuller at UMASS Amherst (86-88) working on bacterial polyesters.
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