Saurabh Malani
- Co-founder and CTO, Fermeate
- Activate Fellow, Cyclotron Road at Berkeley Lab
Scientist, engineer, and builder.
About
I grew up in Singapore, studied chemical engineering at UC Berkeley, and earned my PhD at Princeton, where the science behind Fermeate was born.
Since June 2026 I have also been an Activate Fellow and Cyclotron Road Entrepreneurial Fellow at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, a two-year fellowship for science entrepreneurs.
I've spent my career chasing hard problems across chemistry, biology, computation, and hardware. When a problem needs a skill I don't have yet, I go learn it.
What I'm building
Fermeate
Fermeate is an industrial biotech company using light to reprogram biology. By controlling living cells with light, we raise the yield and lower the cost of biomanufacturing and bio-based products. The technology spun out of my PhD research at Princeton.
As co-founder and CTO, I lead a team of seven across light-responsive strain engineering, light-delivery hardware for bioreactors, and model-based process control. We have raised $2M to date, plus non-dilutive funding from DARPA and the ReFED Catalytic Grant Fund.
Backed by SOSV SF (formerly IndieBio), Newfund, Ajinomoto Group Ventures, Ki Tua Fund, Heuristic Capital, Momentum Capital, Plug and Play, Tesserakt Ventures, Gener8tor, and BEAM Circular.
The range
If it's a hard technical problem, I'll learn it and build it.
- Singapore Where I'm from. A*STAR National Science Scholar (BS-PhD), with research at three A*STAR institutes spanning drug discovery, catalysis, and bioprocess engineering.
- UC Berkeley BS in Chemical Engineering, Highest Honors.
- Princeton PhD in Chemical and Biological Engineering. The research that became Fermeate.
- Fermeate Co-founder and CTO. Building it from the science up.
- Berkeley Lab Activate Fellow and Cyclotron Road Entrepreneurial Fellow.
Building a company
Taking the science from the lab to the market.
- Fundraising and investor relations
- Customer development and partnerships
- Technoeconomic modeling and unit economics
- Turning research into IP and product
Cells and bioengineering
Programming what cells make, and how much.
- Strain engineering
- Optogenetics
- Fermentation and bioprocess development
- Enzyme engineering and optimization
Computation
Building with AI and learning from data.
- Machine learning models of cells and bioreactors, trained on sparse lab data
- Writing production software with AI coding agents, from data pipelines to web and desktop apps
- Physics-informed machine learning and system identification
- Computational fluid dynamics and reactor modeling
- Mathematical modeling of dynamical systems
Hardware and hands-on
If the science needs a machine, I build it.
- Custom electronics and PCB design
- Welding, soldering, and fabrication
- Building lab and pilot hardware from scratch
Publications
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bioRxiv Submitted *Co-first authors
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Using MitER for 3D analysis of mitochondrial morphology and ER contacts
Cell Reports Methods 4(1), 100692
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High-throughput feedback-enabled optogenetic stimulation and spectroscopy in microwell plates
Communications Biology 6, 1192
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Computers & Chemical Engineering 178, 108343
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Initializing LSTM internal states via manifold learning
Chaos: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Nonlinear Science 31(9), 093111
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Sequential cascade electrocatalytic conversion of carbon dioxide to C–C coupled products
ACS Applied Energy Materials 2(6), 4551-4559
Background
- Princeton University PhD, Chemical and Biological EngineeringPrinceton University MA, Chemical and Biological EngineeringUC Berkeley BS, Chemical Engineering, Highest Honors
- Bioeconomy: Capital, Community and Connections SF Climate Week PanelistClosed-loop control of microbial population ratio in optogenetically controlled yeast-yeast consortia U.S. DOE Genomic Science Program Annual PI Meeting PosterSome of the variables, some of the times, with some things known: Identification with partial information Machine Learning and Dynamical Systems Seminar, The Alan Turing Institute Invited talkOptogenetic control of a yeast-yeast consortium for chemical production U.S. DOE Genomic Science Program Annual PI Meeting PosterSome of the variables, some of the times, with some things known: Identification with partial information AIChE Annual Meeting TalkOptogenetic strategies for the control and optimization of microbial consortia 3rd Optogenetic Technologies and Applications Conference TalkInitializing the internal states of LSTM neural networks via manifold learning AIChE Annual Meeting Talk
- Won the 2025 Sustainable Protein Startup Competition Enterprise Singapore and the Bezos Centre for Sustainable Protein at NUSFermeate raises $2M to deliver a step-change in precision fermentation economics with optogenetics AgFunderNewsSelected for BEAM Circular's 2026 Accelerator BEAM Circular
Connect
Let's talk.
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