Harshal Chokhawala Co-Founder & CEO Harshal earned his Ph.D. in Chemistry from UC Davis and then worked as a project scientist at the UC Berkeley and Lawrence Berkeley National Lab establishing himself as a research leader in field biocatalysis (>30 peer-reviewed publications, ~4000 citations, h-index 24) with publications in Science & Nature Communications. In true Silicon Valley style, Harshal started ZymoChem as an idea on paper to disrupt the global chemicals industry. Since then he and co-founder, Jon Kuchenreuther, have led ZymoChem’s journey to funding from venture capital, government grants, and collaborations with Fortune 500 companies, building a high performing team of nearly 50 employees, and establishing ZymoChem as the frontier synthetic biology company developing cost competitive and scalable bio-based technologies to produce low carbon footprint biomaterials for everyday products.