Samsara appoints scientific advisory board

Recycling technology company Samsara Eco has appointed a scientific advisory board to work alongside its R&D team and guide strategic initiatives.

In a statement on Monday, Samsara – which completed a $100 million funding round in June – named the following advisory board members:

• Dr Sean Simpson, co-founder, LanzaTech; 
• Dr Gregg Beckham, Senior Research Fellow and Group Leader at National Renewable Energy Laboratory, Colorado, USA; and 
• Professor Sang Yup Lee (Senior VP for Research, Korea Advanced Institute of Science & Technology)

Samsara was officially launched in 2021 and is commercialising an “enzymatic depolymerisation”-based approach to breaking a variety of plastics into their constituent monomers to be recycled.

“The Scientific Advisory Board is the next step in Samsara Eco’s growth journey, enabling us to demonstrate our best-in-class technical expertise to help us deliver climate repair,” said Paul Riley, CEO and Founder of Samsara Eco.

 “Our advisors are the pre-eminent researchers in their fields, and we are proud to have assembled the most qualified group of scientists to help drive our scientific endeavours.”

Simpson described the scientific advisory board as focussed on helping Samsara scale its technology and assist different industries in reaching their circularity goals.  

“My co-founder and I built LanzaTech from scratch, and I’m looking forward to applying what I learned scaling a sustainable innovation to ultimately help Samsara Eco grow,” added Simpson.

LanzaTech was established in New Zealand in 2005, uses fermentation to turn waste gases from steel mills into chemical products, and listed on the NASDAQ early last year via a SPAC deal.

Simpson’s other roles include a directorship at NZ e-waste recycling company Mint Innovation, which opened a biorefinery in Smithfield, Sydney in 2022..

Beckham is a highly-awarded chemical engineering researcher and CEO of the BOTTLE consortium, with researchers from a collection of US laboratories aiming to develop “robust processes to upcycle existing waste plastics and create new circular polymers”.

Lee is a biotechnology and metabolic engineering specialist, with over 800 patents and “known for pioneering advancements in systems biology, synthetic biology, and industrial biotechnology” according to the statement from Samsara.

Picture: Enzymatically recycled plastic pellet (supplied)

Further reading

Digesting the issue: Woolies-backed startup prepares to set its enzymes on our waste plastic

Australian “Infinitely recyclable” plastic startup launched

Mint to open site for recovering precious metals from Sydney’s e-waste

Samsara Eco raises $100m to recycle plastics

Samsara’s plastic eating enzymes get a new laboratory

Sending a computer-designed “Pac-Man” army into the war on waste