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We’re twig
We’re serious people, with some seriously cool technology. We’re growing the world’s biggest little ingredients, here in London. Our mission is to create better products, for a better relationship with our planet.
We’re doing bioengineering differently, with radically faster R&D. Instead of taking a punt on one of millions of genetic pathways (like our competitors do) we let our tech tell us where to start. That means we know where to go and what to grow.
Our automated lab means we can manipulate and analyse tens of thousands of bacterial strains each week, without human bias or routine errors. We assess each one for its environmental impact, commercial benefit and feasibility.
Every experiment, successful or not, provides valuable data for our transfer learning technology. That defines and builds our product roadmap, pushing us closer to sustainable ingredients. There’s no waste, no downtime – just a better way forward, every time.
When we’ve discovered a successful strain, it’s production-ready and set for licensing from day one. The result: high-yield, low-cost, scalable ingredients, out of the lab and into everyday life.
Meet the twiglets
The people, not the snack..
Our founders
First and foremost, we’re scientists and engineers. Between us, we’ve got decades of hands-on experience in bioengineering and machine learning. But we’ve got business brains too – because sustainable change needs commerce. We’ve done the hard yards in industry, from founding start-ups to advising major companies. Here’s more about us.
James Allen
Chief Scientific Officer
James completed a biochemistry doctorate at the University of Oxford, discovering novel chemotaxis. In 2015, he joined global ingredients manufacturer Invista to research building chemical production strains. James returned to academia in 2017, to lead synthetic biology research into chemical bio-manufacturing at University College London. He co-founded twig in 2022.
Satnam Surae
Chief Technology Officer
Satnam holds a doctorate in computational engineering of proteins from University College Dublin. He’s also the former Chief Product Officer for machine learning biopharma platform Aigenpulse. Satnam met James at Invista in 2015, where he was working on multi-omics data processing and integration for the analysis of strain optimisation. The pair stayed in touch, and twig was born.
Russ Tucker
Chief Executive Officer
Russ is a fully qualified chartered accountant with a biomedical engineering doctorate from the University of Oxford, where he first met James. He joined Boston Consulting Group in 2013, advising large corporates on commercial and operational strategy. He’s also the founder of cultivated meat company Ivy Farm Technologies and was a progress fellow at the Tony Blair Institute for Change. In 2022, James asked Russ for his thoughts on twig. Russ knows a good thing when he sees it, so he joined the founding team.
Vicky Clayton
Tech team
Laurence Legon
Tech team
Tina Brown
Strategy & Ops
Rebecca Moore
Science team
Finn Mansfield
Science team
Mandy Hulst
Science team
Chris Lai
Tech team
Dominic Pinel
Science team
Dusty
Pawductivity Guru
Bramble, Hazel and Rose
Branch Managers
Our investors
We’re proud to have a fantastic group of impactful and committed investors as part of our journey to build our products. If you’re an investor that wants to create ingredients that don’t cost the earth then get in touch.
Our partners
twig partners with great companies, universities and funding bodies to drive bioengineering innovation