April 27, 2017
Todd Pray
Program Head, ABPDU
Berkeley Lab’s Bay Area community resources for collaborative bioprocess development and scale-up for microbes, proteins, chemicals, materials and biofuels.
The Advanced Biofuels (and Bioproducts) Process Demonstration Unit (ABPDU) at DOE’s Lawrence Berkeley National Lab in Emeryville is available to industry researchers in need of bioprocess development and scale-up. The team and facilities at the ABPDU in Emeryville are experienced and flexible enough to accommodate nearly any feedstock and produce and purify nearly any type of biobased product, from small molecule chemicals to proteins, plastics and microbial consortia. The ABPDU has worked with 30 companies over the past three years, to help advance their technology and corporate development. One of our mandates is to search out and identify new technologies and partnerships we can help develop, in order to advance the commercialization of new bioproducts in an accommodating environment with startup-friendly cost and IP structures.
Throughout his career Todd has been committed to developing bioscience technologies that improve human health and environmental sustainability across a broad spectrum of pharmaceutical, food science and renewable fuel and chemical product R&D programs. As Program Head at ABPDU, his role is to lead the development and execution of R&D projects with clients and collaborators.
Prior to the ABPDU, Todd spent a year at Impossible Food, Inc., a cutting-edge Bay Area start up in the emerging food biotech space, as Sr. Director of Product Development. Before his time there, Todd progressed through several roles at Amyris, Inc., most recently as Senior Director of Product Management. Todd helped direct strategic collaborations for bio-based fuel and chemical product development and scale-up with the US Department of Energy and as a Steering Committee member for Amyris’ commercial partnerships with Total New Energies and Beta Renewables.
Before entering the renewable fuel and chemical industry Todd was a scientist and project leader at a number of Bay Area pharmaceutical and biotech companies such as Rigel, Exelixis and Acumen Pharmaceuticals. In this role he developed pre-clinical and clinical products in therapeutic indications as diverse as oncology, Hepatitis C virus, and Alzheimer’s disease.
