Chris has a B.S. in Chemical Engineering from UC Davis and a Ph.D. from the California Institute of Technology. He is an accomplished Biochemical Engineer and Functional/Project manager, with 28 years of industrial biotechnology experience in food, nutraceutical, specialty, and commodity chemical segments. He has worked at CP Kelco, NutraSweet, and, most recently, Tate & Lyle where he was Director, BioVentures and Support Services, overseeing the Analytical, Citric Strain Development, Small-Scale Fermentation Lab, and Fermentation Pilot Plant functions. Dr. Guske has provided service to the commodity, specialty, and high-value chemicals, ag-bio, algae, animal-free products, rare sugars, and private equity sectors, including facility assessment, CMO support/identification, process development, optimization and troubleshooting, cost modeling, aseptic design/contamination troubleshooting, high-level facilities design, and due diligence assessment. He has expertise in process development, technical transfer, troubleshooting, process analysis, experimental design and applied statistics, tracking and optimization, cost reduction, downstream recovery, bioreactor design, plant startups, strain evaluation, media development and optimization, and scale up/scale down experience. His experience includes such diverse products and processes as 1,3-propanediol, 1,4-butanediol, astaxanthin, farnesene, citric acid, xanthan gum, polyhydroxyalkanoates and organisms such as prokaryotes, yeast, fungi, microalgae.