Neil Dalvie

I am a chemical engineer and a postdoctoral fellow in the Synthetic Biology Hive at Harvard Medical School. As an undergraduate at Northwestern, I gained a foundational knowledge in the logic and techniques of molecular biology from Professor Josh Leonard. In graduate school at MIT, I worked with Professor J. Christopher Love to enable low-cost manufacturing of vaccines and antibodies in yeast. I performed both protein and cell engineering and learned from biologists and bioengineers at MIT’s Koch Institute. During the COVID-19 pandemic, I led a small team in the rapid development of a vaccine candidate. Our process was implemented at scale at the Serum Institute of India, the world’s largest vaccine manufacturer, and the product was deployed in the clinic in Australia and Zimbabwe.

After graduate school, I received a Schmidt Science Fellowship to “pivot” my research. I joined the Synthetic Biology Hive to study the application of microorganisms to accelerate rock weathering. After two years learning geochemistry, marine biochemistry, and environmental microbiology, I established a unique experimental platform that enables coupled measurement of cell state and mineral dissolution rates. This will guide the design of mineral seawater bioreactors in the industry.

Experimental precision routinely deployed for the development and manufacture of medicines is missing from the development of environmental engineering processes. Conversely, the scale and cost of manufacturing of high-value products could be transformed by environmental microbiological discoveries. I envision a research program in bio-geo-chemical engineering to rigorously study continuous mineral processing and the production and application of siderophores. We will translate our work alongside large and small process engineering companies.

Google scholar: https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=wDIM6y0AAAAJ&hl=en&oi=ao

Website: https://www.neildalvie.com/

February 2025