The Bio Innovations North America conference agenda, running parallel to the 1-2-1 meetings program, was designed to drive the event’s core mission of driving the commercialization of US industrial biomanufacturing.
Carefully curated panels and keynotes sparked transformative 1-2-1 commercial discussions. Hand-picked speakers delivered actionable insights and solutions to critical industry challenges, helping unlock the immense potential of America’s bioeconomy.
08:00
Welcome coffee & registration
09:00
Welcome & Opening Remarks
Paul MacDonald, Co-Founder & Managing Director, Bio Innovations North America
09:10
Opening Keynote
Interview with Governor Jim Pillen, Governor of Nebraska
Hosted by:
John Henderson, CEO, HDR
Featuring:
Governor Jim Pillen, Governor of Nebraska
09:35
Fireside chat
From start-up to shelf: How Mars Snacking is helping scale precision fermentation innovations to produce the novel ingredients of the future
This fireside chat will explore how precision fermentation is set to transform the production of novel food ingredients (colors, flavors, and proteins).
Hear how Mars Snacking is actively supporting early-stage innovators through the Unreasonable Food accelerator program. Learn how the company can use its substantial market pull to de-risk investment, while taking a multilateral approach to partnering, working with scaled suppliers to help start-ups cross the chasm and achieve commercialisation.
Greg Hocking, Vice President Global R&D New Innovation Territories, Mars Snacking
10:00
Technology Readiness on an Industrial Scale
In this presentation, Jason O’Brien of Cargill will explore what it truly means to be technologically ready for industrial-scale production within the growing bioeconomy. Moving beyond successful laboratory and pilot-scale results, he will discuss the challenges of scaling bioprocesses to commercial operations, including process reliability, feedstock integration, supply chain readiness, economics, and operational excellence. Attendees will gain insights into the critical factors that differentiate a promising innovation from a viable industrial solution, and how collaboration across technology, manufacturing, and market stakeholders accelerates successful commercialization.
Jason O’Brien, Senior Director R&D Global Fermentation, Cargill
10:15
AI for Living Factories
Biomanufacturing holds tremendous opportunity. Yet promising breakthroughs often fail at commercial scale, driving up costs and delaying the market entry of biomaterials. In the AI era, fast, predictable progress is possible. The key is defining the problems that matter, then tailoring the modeling and data strategies accordingly. We will describe the real-world results we have seen with our partners using an integrated modeling approach to address the complex challenges of strain and process development and scale-up.
Relly Brandman, Moonshot Lead, A-Life, A Google X Moonshot
John Bachman, Science Lead, A-Life, A Google X Moonshot
10:30
PANEL DISCUSSION
Pathways to SAF: Scaling innovations to deliver sustainability and supply-chain resilience
The aviation industry has set ambitious decarbonization targets with a commitment to SAF at the heart of their strategy. In this panel, learn how stakeholders across the SAF value chain are working together to scale production and deployment. SAF producers, technology developers, airlines, and other industry participants will discuss feedstock strategies, policy incentives that help close the cost gap, pathways to price parity, offtake and partnership models that unlock investment, geopolitical factors driving demand, and the critical infrastructure needed to take SAF from feedstock and factory through blending and logistics into the aircraft fuel tank.
Featuring:
Joseph Gale, Manager, Environmental Sustainability, United Airlines
Ashwin Jadhav, Vice President, Business Development, Twelve
11:00
Networking coffee
11:40
PANEL DISCUSSION
Funding scale-up: Filling the "missing middle"
Scaling industrial biomanufacturing demands hundreds of millions in capital, yet many projects stall in the “valley of death” with investors hesitating due to long paybacks, technical uncertainty, and policy volatility. This investor-focused panel brings together leading growth capital providers, infrastructure funds and corporate venture arms, alongside public-sector funding providers to explore funding solutions to fill the “missing middle”. What are the technical and commercial milestone projects must achieve to become investable? And how can developers, financiers, strategics and government align to unlock the investment America needs to unleash its world leading biomanufacturing potential.
Hosted by:
Erum Azeez Khan, Partner, MessagingLab & Co-Host, Grow Everything Podcast
Featuring:
Olga Polunina, Managing Director, JP Morgan
12:00
Solverra
Rich Rowley, Director of Sales and Marketing, Solverra
12:15
PANEL DISCUSSION
Closing the Pilot/Demonstration Facility Gap: Infrastructure to Enable U.S. Biomanufacturing Scale-Up
North America faces a critical shortage of pilot and demonstration facilities compared to Europe and Asia, slowing the translation of promising bioprocesses into commercial reality. Hear from Illinois Fermentation and Agriculture Biomanufacturing Tech Hub (iFAB) members working to scale novel bioprocesses on what infrastructure is needed to bridge the “valley of death”. We will discuss how consortiums such as iFAB can offer unique “lab to line” capacity and infrastructure solutions that accelerate growth within the bioeconomy. The panel will explore opportunities to expand iFAB’s capabilities further through strategic partnerships as well as lessons that can be shared as North America builds out its biomanufacturing infrastructure to compete globally.
Hosted by:
Tim Fowler, General Manager, Biosolutions, Primient
Featuring:
Ismael Nieves, General Manager, iPROOF
John Ellersick, President, Next Rung Technology
Michael Tai, CEO, Boston Bioprocess
Beth Conerty, Regional Innovation Officer, iFAB Tech Hub
12:45
Reinventing the Triple Helix: Closing America's Bioeconomy Translation Gap
The U.S. leads the world in biological discovery yet fails to convert it into companies, manufacturing, and jobs—a structural gap costing over $600B in unrealized annual output. This talk introduces the National Biotechnology Incubator Network (NBIN): a 50-state tiered network of translational incubators bridging biotech’s TRL 3–6 “valley of death,” pairing patient capital with pilot-scale infrastructure to turn American discovery into domestic industry, security, and economic growth.
Mark Bathe PhD, Professor of Biological Engineering, Massachusetts Institute of Technology
13:00
Networking lunch
14:30
Panel discussion
Lessons from the front line: Strategies for scale-up successes and pitfalls to avoid
The journey from lab to commercial plant is rarely straightforward, with the behaviour of microbes hard to predict at scale. Hear from those who have successfully (and sometimes painfully) scaled novel bioprocesses, as they share hard-won lessons on navigating common challenges and provide insights into proven accelerators. What can be done to mitigate the risk of yield drops at scale, contamination events, feedstock volatility, regulatory and technical delays and IP/security risks? How can new technologies such as AI/digital twins and continuous/modular processing derisk scale-up. And how can strategic partnerships with incumbents and CDMOs, and access to shared pilot infrastructure shorten timelines, reduce risk, and increase the probability of reaching full-scale success.
Hosted by:
Karl Schmieder, Partner, Messaginglab & Co-Host, Grow Everything Podcast
Featuring:
Steve Bray, Director, Specialty and Biochemical Project Services, TritenIAG
Phillip Crawford, Director of Project Engineering, Roebling
15:00
Critical capabilities for accelerating industry adoption of biomanufacturing
Amyris is a vertically integrated biotechnology company that has pioneered the use of microbes to convert abundant, plant-based sugars into high-performing chemicals. In his talk, Corbin Johnson, VP of Business Development at Amyris, will describe some of the capabilities Amyris has built to transform precision fermentation from a promising lab-scale technology into a robust manufacturing engine that reliably delivers on the stringent needs of global industries. He will also describe Amyris’ unique bench-to-bench collaboration approach, which focuses on mapping customer functional needs to relevant biological chemistry. These developments reflect Amyris’ focus on high-impact opportunities to accelerate adoption of biomanufacturing.
Corbin Johnson, VP of Business Development and Strategy, Amyris
15:15
From Bench to Demo Plant: BioMADE's Roadmap for Biomanufacturing Scale-Up
BioMADE’s mission is to grow the U.S. biomanufacturing industry, focusing on scale-up and commercialization of new technologies. The industry has a need for more fermentation capacity and scale-up capability. Learn more about the pilot plant network that BioMADE is building across the United States, offering bench-scale through 25,000L fermenters plus DSP capabilities, helping organizations scale faster and survive the so-called “Valley of Death”. In this presentation, Eelco will describe the capabilities and services that BioMADE offers the biomanufacturing industry.
Eelco Blum, BioMADE
15:30
Networking refreshments
16:00
BioIntelligence Technologies
Joel Sirois, Founder-President & CEO, BioIntelligence Technologies
16:15
Radicle Corn Challenge
The Radicle Corn Challenge will invest $1.75M in startups from around the world that are developing new uses for corn and creating new, durable demand across emerging markets and value chains.
The competition features technologies that can convert corn, and corn-derived streams such as sugar, ethanol, protein, carbon dioxide, and other byproducts, into higher-value products including materials, chemicals, fuels, and other novel applications. Two winners of the Radicle Corn Challenge will be announced live on stage at Bio Innovations North America 2026, with the winners presenting their pioneering corn-based innovations.
Hosted by:
Brian Jones, Chief Operating Officer, Iowa Corn
Featuring:
Neal Gutterson, Partner and CTO, Radicle Growth