Charles Denby, CEO of Berkeley Brewing Science
Charles Denby is the CEO of Berkeley Brewing Science (BBS), a startup that develops enhanced brewer’s yeast strains. BBS has developed technology to replace the use of hops–an expensive, variable, and non-sustainable agricultural product–by engineering brewer’s yeast to biosynthesize hop-derived flavor compounds during the industrial brewing process. Prior to BBS, Charles earned a Ph.D. in Molecular and Cellular Biology at UC Berkeley. He then went on to postdoc with Jay Keasling, where he developed core technology for BBS. Charles is passionate about making industrial food processes more sustainable, as well as showcasing microbial engineering as a feature in food production, rather than as a bug.