As Vice President of Science & Technology at The Good Food Institute, Liz works to identify and forecast areas of technological need within the alternative protein field. Her efforts also catalyze research to address these needs while supporting researchers in academia and industry to move the field forward. Liz has a bachelor’s degree in chemical and biomolecular engineering from Johns Hopkins University, a doctorate in biological sciences from the University of California San Diego, and postdoctoral research experience from the University of Colorado Boulder. Prior to joining GFI in 2016, Liz had accumulated a decade of academic research experience in synthetic biology, recombinant protein expression, and development of genetic tools. She is a firm believer in the power of technology to enable us to meet growing food demands in a sustainable way.
As pressure on our food system increases to meet the demands of a growing population with evolving dietary preferences, it is clear that new approaches are needed to produce the most resource-intensive foods. By expanding upon on advances in biotechnology and food science, there is an opportunity to more efficiently leverage agricultural resources, reduce dependency on intensive industrial animal farming, and develop brand new categories of products that are both safer and more delicious and nutritious than their conventional counterparts. The food system of the future will be one in which raw materials are converted into high-quality, nutrient-dense foods with real-time and geographically-dictated responsiveness to consumer demand. This approach will allow us to make the most efficient use of resources, reduce the amount of land dedicated to agriculture, and stabilize the market swings that have characterized agriculture since the dawn of trade. Tomorrow's food system will be fully integrated into other sectors of the global bioeconomy, with a paradigm of converting and repurposing biomass from one industry to another rather than the current lens of extracting resources from an increasingly burdened planet.