The Science of Alt Protein: From lab to table — harnessing filamentous fungi for sustainable foods

Vayu Hill-Maini, Ph.D.

INCOMING ASSISTANT PROFESSOR OF BIOENGINEERING
STANFORD UNIVERSITY

Vayu is a scientist, chef, educator and a current postdoctoral fellow working with Jay Keasling at University of California, Berkeley. Vayu fell in love with cooking at a young age in his multicultural home in Stockholm, Sweden. He first moved to the U.S to work in restaurants, but the flavors, textures, and sensations of the kitchen eventually led him to scientific research. He earned his PhD in Biochemistry from Harvard University working in the lab of Emily Balskus, where he identified and characterized strains and enzymes involved in the metabolism of prominent drugs and dietary compounds in the human gut microbiota. As a Miller Fellow at UC Berkeley, Vayu has combined his background from the kitchen and the laboratory to tackle challenges in the food system. His current research characterizes and engineers filamentous fungi to produce sustainable and delicious foods. This highly interdisciplinary work has led to new synthetic biology tools for edible fungi, discovery of a fungus domesticated for conversion of waste to food, and new dishes at Michelin star restaurants, including Alchemist in Copenhagen. Vayu loves sharing his passion for food and STEM with the public, and runs the organization STEAM Chefs, which uses cooking to teach science in classrooms all around the world. He will continue this work running his own research group as an assistant professor of bioengineering at Stanford University starting in September 2024.