SynBioBeta Speaker
Onye Ahanotu
Ikenga Wines
Founder
Onye Ahanotu, Founder of Ikenga Wines, explores how technology can aid in designing a better world. At Ikenga Wines his sparkling palm wines are the expressions of an artist’s touch and a scientist’s mind. Building off ancestral techniques, an expertise in materials, and an art practice, He demonstrates how innovation can support cultural representation, while making sustainability irresistible.
Sessions Featuring
Onye
This Year
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Business of Biology
Decentralized Biology: Designing Community-Scale Bioeconomies
How can local communities benefit from biotechnology? This session explores strategies for building decentralized biotech ecosystems that support local innovation, shared ownership, and resilient bioeconomies. By aligning biotechnology with planetary stewardship and place-based knowledge, we highlight a new era of bio-based products and initiatives led by founders bringing their culture and community into biotechnology.
Featuring
Rolando Perez
Stanford University
Senior Scientist
Transdisciplinary practitioner bridging AIxBio, fungi, space, equity.
Leon Elcock
Independent
Researcher
Synbio community-builder championing “cyan-collar” biomanufacturing workforces.
Maria Astolfi
Keasling Lab, UCB
Doctoral Candidate
Indigenous Amazonian benefit-sharing advocate, AI genome-miner.
Onye Ahanotu
Ikenga Wines
Founder
Brewing science, culture, and sustainability
Sakti Subramanian
Stanford University
Undergraduate
Building the Midwest synbio community.
Callie Chappell
Stanford University
NSF Postdoc Fellow
Building “LABraries”—public-library biotech labs bringing biology to everyone.
•
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Business of Biology
Decentralized Biology: Designing Community-Scale Bioeconomies
How can local communities benefit from biotechnology? This session explores strategies for building decentralized biotech ecosystems that support local innovation, shared ownership, and resilient bioeconomies. By aligning biotechnology with planetary stewardship and place-based knowledge, we highlight a new era of bio-based products and initiatives led by founders bringing their culture and community into biotechnology.
Featuring
Rolando Perez
Stanford University
Senior Scientist
Transdisciplinary practitioner bridging AIxBio, fungi, space, equity.
Leon Elcock
Independent
Researcher
Synbio community-builder championing “cyan-collar” biomanufacturing workforces.
Maria Astolfi
Keasling Lab, UCB
Doctoral Candidate
Indigenous Amazonian benefit-sharing advocate, AI genome-miner.
Onye Ahanotu
Ikenga Wines
Founder
Brewing science, culture, and sustainability
Sakti Subramanian
Stanford University
Undergraduate
Building the Midwest synbio community.
Callie Chappell
Stanford University
NSF Postdoc Fellow
Building “LABraries”—public-library biotech labs bringing biology to everyone.
