LoCatIOn
24 Balfour Road
Parnell Auckland NZ
+64 9 304 2110
+64 9 929 3038
781 Cailun Road
Room 215
Zhangjiang HiTech Park
Pudong Shanghai CHINA 201203
+86 21 50116322
+86 21 50116323
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Management Team
Dr Jennifer Holmgren
| Dr. Jennifer Holmgren is the Chief Executive Officer of LanzaTech. Jennifer has over 20 years of experience in the energy sector including a proven track record in the development and commercialization of fuels and chemicals technologies. Prior to joining LanzaTech, she was Vice President and General Manager of the Renewable Energy and Chemicals business unit at UOP LLC, a Honeywell Company. In that role, she led UOP’s renewable business from its inception through to the achievement of significant revenues from the commercialization of multiple novel biofuels technologies. Dr. Jennifer Holmgren holds a B.Sc. degree from Harvey Mudd College, a Ph.D. from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and an MBA from the University of Chicago. She currently serves on multiple external advisory boards. She is the author or co-author of 50 US patents, 20 scientific publications and is the 2003 recipient of the Council for Chemical Research’s (CCR) Malcolm E. Pruitt Award. |
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Dr Sean Simpson - CSO and Co-Founder
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Sean is the Chief Scientific Officer and co-founder of LanzaTech. Sean spent the first 12 years of his life living in various countries around the world, including Mauritius, Zambia and Gibraltar, before his family returned to England. He now lives with his family in Auckland, New Zealand. Sean and his wife Silvia have two young children, a daughter Cecilia and a son Liam. Sean is an enthusiastic (if not skillful!) soccer player when time permits; he is also an avid supporter of Middlesborough “Boro” Football Club. He dreams of one day having the time to sail with his gorgeous family around the Pacific...but first he needs to learn to sail... and help LanzaTech to commercial success! |
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Dr Will Barker- Intellectual Property
| Will joined LanzaTech in 2008 to direct LanzaTech’s patent portfolio and develop an IP strategy geared toward rapid technological development and commercialisation. Will joined LanzaTech from one of New Zealand’s top patent attorney firms and specialised in biotechnology. Prior to this, Will spent several years as a forensic examiner, assisting NZ police with the investigation and decommissioning of illicit drug laboratories. Will gained a Bachelors Degree in chemistry and a PhD in synthetic chemistry from the University of Leicester in the UK before arriving in NZ on a ‘working holiday’. The initially planned 12 month vacation has extended indefinitely and NZ is now home to Will’s rapidly expanding family (1 x beautiful spouse, 1 x little boy, 1 x baby girl, 1 x yellow dog, 1 x insecure cat). In his spare time, Will loves to spend time with said family and enjoys sailing the stunning Hauraki Gulf, conveniently located on LanzaTech’s doorstep. |  |
Dr Christophe Mihalcea-Product Synthesis
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Christophe leads the research activities related to ethanol production and yields. This includes amongst other things the optimization of media recipes and attempting to influence the metabolic pathways of the bacteria. He is also involved with conditioning and cleaning of the gases used as the feedstock for the microbes. Christophe is our resident Chemistry expert and among other things has a doctorate in natural sciences from the University of Kassel, Germany. Having worked extensively around the world from Tsukuba, Japan to Pittsburgh, USA he now finds himself in Auckland, where his enthusiasm for his research is only equalled by his love of a cold beer after a hard yoga session. He is widely published and has contributed to multiple patents. |
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Dr Christophe Collet- Process Scale Up
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Christophe and his team work with the development of scaling up the LanzaTech process for commercialization. Christophe has a Masters in Biochemistry from the University of Geneva and a Doctorate in Environmental Biotechnology from the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Lausanne (EPFL), Switzerland. Having travelled the world, Christophe found that New Zealand was able to unite two of his passions, thermophilic bacteria and sailing. Having left the geothermal regions of New Zealand for LanzaTech in Auckland, Christophe now sails in the Royal New Zealand Yacht Squadron regatta on a Stuart 34 sailboat on the Hauraki Gulf each week-before returning home to his beautiful wife and baby boy. |
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Simon Trevethick-Process Engineering
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Simon holds a Bachelor of Engineering (Chemical and Materials) and has over 25 years experience including process design and project management. He has worked as a Senior Chemical Engineer and as a Consulting Engineer for ICI working on process design and process analysis. Simon’s project management experience has involved leading the expansion and rebuild of commercial manufacturing plants. He has led contract teams at Dulux and Nuplex and been involved in the process design for various projects in the food and chemical industries. Simon worked for 7 years with James Hardie, as a product development leader in Auckland and Sydney developing engineering materials and technologies. His work has since been patented and Simon subsequently was made European Technical Manager in Amsterdam. |
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Ajit Surjupersad-Process Operations
| Ajit leads the Process operations team and works with his team to establish effective Pilot Plant operations and lend lab engineering support. He has worked for the last 12 years in various capacities from research and development, technology transfer to process management, mostly for a large scale amino acid fermentation and technology group. Ajit hails from the land of the Springboks, where he grew up on the sunny east coast of Durban in the Zulu Kingdom. He pursued studies in Chemical Engineering at the Durban University of Technology and is currently probing the fields of Biotechnology and Quality. Ajit has seen a fair bit of the world and enjoys tramping and hiking, he could add sailing to that list, if only his girlfriend wasn’t so prone to seasickness. He lives in Auckland with his partner and a cat called Henry. |
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