Noah Helman, Ph.D., is Co-Founder and CEO of Industrial Microbes (iMicrobes), a Bay Area synthetic biology company engineering programmable microbes to convert renewable feedstocks like ethanol and methane into cost-competitive, low-carbon chemicals.

Noah earned an A.B. in Physics from Harvard University and a Ph.D. in Applied Physics from Stanford University, before transitioning into synthetic biology as a postdoctoral fellow at UC San Francisco.

With deep expertise in directed evolution, metabolic engineering, and scalable biomanufacturing, Noah champions the use of waste and renewable feedstocks as the foundation of a circular economy.

Prior to co-founding iMicrobes in 2014, Noah honed his skills at LS9, Inc., where he developed a directed evolution pipeline integrating automation, software, and high-throughput fermentation techniques, and also participated in Y Combinator in 2015.

iMicrobes holds 22 patents, has raised over $10M in seed funding led by First Bight Ventures, and received a $300,000 EPA grant, with products targeting industries from carbon fiber to coatings and consumer goods.