Neal is a contributing author on numerous peer-reviewed papers, book chapters, patents, and conference abstracts. He is a past president of the Society for Industrial Microbiology. He received his BS in Biology from Norwich University in 1984 and his PhD in Microbiology from Ohio State University in 1991. From 1991 to 2008, he was in the Bioprocess R&D department of Merck & Co., Inc. .

Dr. Watson has almost thirty years of experience in the pharmaceutical and biotechnology industries. Dr Watson received his B.Sc. (Hons) from the University of N.S.W. in Sydney, Australia, his Ph.D. in Chemistry from the Australian National University and carried out postdoctoral research at Harvard University. He also obtained an M.B.A. from Northeastern University. he negotiated the sale of SmartCells to Merck & Co. for $500M

Theodore T. Miller Career Development Associate Professor of Chemical Engineering at MIT. She obtained a Bachelor of Science degree in chemical engineering from MIT in 1994, and a Ph.D. degree from the University of California, Berkeley, in 1999. At Berkeley, she worked under the supervision of Prof. Jay D. Keasling. Prof. Prather joined the faculty of MIT after 4 years in BioProcess Research and Development at Merck Research Labs (Rahway, NJ).

Mr. Prather has spent a couple of decades developing new business from emerging technologies. Mr. Prather received two S.B.’s from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Electrical Engineering; and Science, Technology and Society. He received an M.A. in Philosophy, Politics and Economics from Oxford University which he attended on a Rhodes Scholarship. Mr. Prather worked for McKinsey & Co., NiaOnline as CTO and Beta Data as VP Strategy.