Biotechnology Industry Consultant

For over 20 years, Dr. Croughan has worked as an independent consultant providing expert guidance on biopharmaceutical, cell therapy, and biofuels process development and manufacturing to more than 80 firms. He and his consulting colleagues often oversee all development issues for many smaller firms bringing new therapies from research to market. From June 2013 to August 2014, he was Chief Technology Officer at Sapphire Energy, Inc., where he lead the R & D effort, with a staff of up to 90 scientists and engineers, to invent, develop, and commercialize methods to economically produce renewable crude oil and animal feed from algae. From January 2006 to August 2013, Dr. Croughan served as the George B. and Joy Rathmann Professor and Director of the Amgen Bioprocessing Center at Keck Graduate Institute (KGI) in Claremont, CA. He founded the KGI bioprocessing program and served as an advisor to over a hundred Master and Doctoral graduates, many of whom were hired by his consulting clients. He received the teaching award and Godfather of Bioprocessing cup from his students at KGI. Prior to 1998, Dr. Croughan worked at Genentech for 10 years, in process development and manufacturing sciences, where he developed the first licensed, high density, fed batch animal cell culture process, a core technology now used for dozens of commercial products with around $100 billion in total annual sales. Dr. Croughan has two chemical engineering degrees, a Ph.D. from Massachusetts Institute of Technology and B.S. from University of California, Berkeley.