About Us
Fornia BioSolutions Inc. is a biotechnology research service company, specializing in the development of superior quality microbial and enzyme products for the agricultural, aquacultural, food processing, feed, household/personal care, and plastic recycling markets. Our research and development laboratory is located in Hayward, California, where we draw upon the brightest research minds in the San Francisco Bay Area. We work closely and collaboratively with our clients to produce next generation products within established markets, as well as novel products that will pioneer new markets. With the growing need for environmentally friendly solutions, our products provide a promising pathway to reduce the environmental impact of industrial processes and promote sustainable development.
Seasoned research experts
Founded in 2015, our client-oriented, multidisciplinary team of seasoned research experts has earned a reputation for producing high quality products, within a quick turnaround time, at a competitive cost. We provide a full range of industry-leading technologies for product development, from computational design/analysis, high-throughput strain/protein mutant construction, and high-throughput screening, to shake flask and fermentation validation.
Our on-site 2L/15L fermentation capacity and access to high quality outsourcing demonstration-scale and commercial-scale fermentation and product manufacturing facilities results in a high success rate, when scaling up from new strain development to full commercial fermentation. Our advanced strain improvement, enzyme directed evolution, and high throughput screening technologies enable us to develop optimal microbial strains for improved bioindustrial products.
Dr. Wenhua Lu
Dr. Wenhua Lu is the Vice President of R & D at Fornia BioSolutions Inc. Dr. Lu had over 15 years of experience working on industrial microbial fermentation and strain improvement for biofuel, bio-based products and recombinant proteins with a variety of biological systems. Dr. Lu’s scientific accomplishments include over 30 peer-reviewed publications and patents.
After receiving his Ph.D. degree in Biochemical Engineering from Chinese Academy of Sciences in 2005, Dr. Lu did his postdoctoral studies in Polytechnic Institute of New York University (NYU-POLY) and worked on the DARPA project to develop fuel-latent bioplastics from biobased ω-hydroxyfatty acids that allow enzymatic degradation after disposal. Soon after completing his postdoctoral research, Dr. Wenhua joined Solazyme Inc. (Currently Corbion Biotech), as a Sr. scientist and led several projects through microalgal strain improvement, fermentation development and manufacturing scale-up support for successful commercialization of multiple tailored oil and AlgaPrimeTM DHA products. In 2018, Dr. Lu joined in Fornia and led the fermentation team. At Fornia, he mainly focused on HTP screening, strain improvement, fermentation process development and commercialization tech transferring.
In his free time, Dr. Lu enjoys reading, hiking and playing with his dog.
Dr. Goutami Banerjee
Goutami Banerjee is the Co-founder and Vice President of Business Development at Fornia BioSolutions Inc. The company focusses on discovering and improving bio-based products for improving everyday life, using their proprietary AI, library design, and HTP screening platforms. Goutami got her Ph.D. in Genetics and completed her postdoctoral studies from Great Lakes Bioenergy Research Center under Michigan State University. During her postdoc, she established an automated platform called “GENPLAT” which is recognized as a state of art tool for evaluating enzyme cocktails in biomass degradation. Soon after completing her postdoctoral research, Goutami joined Codexis Inc., as a scientist and led several projects to successful completion. In 2015 together with a small group of very talented scientists she started her journey with Fornia. At Fornia, she was heavily focused on developing some of its core technologies and production platforms before shifting to business development. Banerjee has over 20 years of experience working on strain development and protein chemistry. Her accolade includes more than 60 peer reviewed articles, filed, and granted patents. She is also an active reviewer for many scientific journals. In her free time, Goutami enjoys reading about world politics and world history.