A future powered by plants

Chris Eiben

Chris is sowing the seeds for a plentiful future by building deep tech companies solving sustainability challenges. The initial technical insight leading to Perlumi's photosynthesis mission was drawn from Chris's strong science background. Chris earned his Ph.D. in Bioengineering at UC Berkeley, focusing on synthetic metabolism and protein engineering in Jay Keasling's lab. He has published his academic work in peer reviewed journals including Nature Biotechnology, and ACS Synthetic Biology. Chris has also authored several patent applications for technology he has developed. To complement his science background, Chris pursued two years of entrepreneurial training via the prestigious Activate fellowship. Outside of company building, Chris loves music, working out, and offbeat cinema.

Rahman Rahman Pour

Rahman earned a Ph.D. in Chemistry from the Department of Chemistry at the University of Warwick in the UK. During his doctoral studies, his research focused on enzymology and structural biology of bacterial lignin degradation.

After completing his Ph.D., Rahman held two postdoctoral positions in protein engineering and synthetic biology in the UK and the USA. During his postdoctoral work, he conducted research on protein engineering and developed tools for heterologous gene expression and genome engineering of non-model organisms.

Before joining GigaCrop, Rahman worked as a protein engineer scientist at Illumina. In this role, he utilized protein engineering methods to optimize enzymes involved in Next Generation Sequencing (NGS).

Juhan Kim

Juhan Kim, Ph.D. is a molecular biologist and enzyme engineer with extensive experience in enzyme discovery, genome engineering, and
synthetic biology. His work spans CRISPR-based genome editing, directed enzyme evolution, and high-throughput assay development, with contributions to novel enzyme identification and protein engineering.

He has conducted postdoctoral research at the University of Colorado Boulder, focusing on enzyme promiscuity and enzymology. He holds a Ph.D. in Chemical and Biological Engineering from Seoul National University and has contributed extensively to the field through publications and patents.

Michael Dougherty

Michael is passionate about doing cool science. He has a background in microbiology and protein engineering. Michael earned a B.S. in microbiology from Penn State and a Ph.D. in microbiology from UW-Madison. He worked on engineering protein transcription factors during a postdoctoral appointment at CalTech, and then worked on biofuels research at the Joint Bioenergy Institute. Prior to joining
Perlumi, he spent several years applying synthetic biology tools to problems in advanced life support technologies in the Bioengineering Branch at the NASA Ames Research Center. Michael was also able to send a microbiology experiment to the International Space Station during
his time at NASA.

Victor Vela

Victor attended undergrad at the University of California, Davis - studying molecular biology. After UC Davis, Victor contributed to both Bayer and BASF’s R&D Assisted Breeding programs, enhancing seeds and traits in several unique vegetable and fruit cultivars. His passion for plant biology research continued when collaborating with startups
using plant molecular biology to establish stable plant transformation lines focusing on eliciting plant secondary metabolites for cosmetic and medical uses. Driven by his passion for climate change, sustainability, Victor joined GigaCrop’s protein engineering team. When not in the lab, Victor spends his free time outside climbing and backpacking with his Groenendael or perfecting song transitions with
his friends.