Combining synthetic biology with AI to create a revolution in sensing
Scentian Bio:
Our Story
Unravelling the mystery of how insects smell led to a ground-breaking discovery - a panel of synthesized insect odorant receptors could be used to create highly senstive biosensors, measuring the concentration of thousands or more compounds,
Dr Andrew Kralicek spent 19 years at Plant & Food Research understanding how odorant receptors work in insects. This led to two key breakthroughs - the ability to synthetically produce these proteins at scale and the ability to connect them with a transducer to create a biosensor.
Scentian Bio was established as a spin out from Plant & Food Research and holds key patents around this technology. We have assembled an amazing multidisciplinary team to unlock the power of a digital sense of smell and taste.
Meet our team
Chief Executive Officer
Jonathan Good is the CEO of Scentian Bio. He has a successful background as an entrepreneur in New Zealand and the USA and has held senior leadership roles in global food businesses.
Jonathan Good
Chief Technology Officer
Dr Andrew Králíček is the Founder and CTO of Scentian Bio,
and previously led the Molecular Sensing Team at Plant &
Food Research. He has spent two decades working out how
to harness the powerful sense of smell that insects have, to enable the biosensing of volatiles. Andrew was awarded the BNZ Supreme Award at the 2018 KiwiNet Research Commercialisation awards.
Andrew Králíček
Chief Scientific Officer
Dr Colm Carraher is a Molecular Biologist who leads assay development at Scentian Bio. He has spent 15 years working on structural and functional aspects of insect olfaction.
His expertise lies in the production of odorant receptors
and their integration into novel biosensor formats. He is a Rutherford Postdoctoral Fellow.
Colm Carraher
Di Brewster is a Biosensor Technologist with an MSc in Nanotechnology. She provides key capability in the production of insect odorant receptors for biosensor development and brings over 30 years of experience in a
wide range of scientific disciplines and lab management.
Di Brewster
Wendy Huo is a Structural Biologist with an MSc from the University of Auckland. She is an expert on protein
production, characterization and structure determination.
She also has extensive experience in analytical chemistry
and environmental science. At Scentian Bio Wendy is
assisting with the production of insect odorant receptors
and the novel biosensor development.
Wendy Huo
Dr Anup Vanarse has a PhD in neuromorphic engineering, focused on using AI to differentiate malt quality using olfactory sensors. He has spent the last 3 years working
for BrainChip, including developing diagnostic models using deep learning.
Anup Vanarse
Dr Mark Agasid is an Electrophysiologist, who brings a wealth of experience from his PhD on ligand-gated ion channels, his post-doc at Oxford and his fellowship at Vertex Pharmaceuticals.
Mark Agasid
Leroy is a Data Scientist and has a Computer Science and Mathematics background and spent four years in atmospheric research, focusing on the application of Machine Learning to weather and climate modelling. More recently, he worked in the food industry, applying AI and deep learning to computer vision problems. He is a passionate about applying data driven methods to solve difficult scientific problems.
Leroy Bird
Alaigne is a Research Scientist and has an MSc in Chemistry focused on the comparison of novel biosensor concepts. She has experience in both biomedical science and physical chemistry and is highly passionate about how biosensing can shape the future.
Alaigne Mare
Parco is the Global Business Development Manager with a MBA degree , who is a well-seasoned global business development professional and has held senior roles within leading global food & beverage businesses in both the US and Asia-Pacific.
Parco Jiang
Jung Shin is a ML Engineer who has a master’s degree in computer science and computer graphics, focused on problem solving using machine learning and deep learning techniques. He has extensive experience with leading New Zealand tech start-ups.
Jung Shin
