Ontario Genomics is pleased to welcome Isha Datar and Dr. Sheila Singh to the National Engineering Biology Steering Committee (NEB Steering Committee).
The NEB Steering Committee supports Canadian advances in biotechnology and engineering biology that enable biology to engineer useful products from sustainable inputs, like waste, through biomanufacturing. In recent years, biomanufacturing has seen a surge in venture capital investment. By working towards a national engineering biology roadmap, the NEB Steering Committee can help make sure Canadian biotechnology companies and manufacturers are competitive in the growing global race to solve our most pressing challenges in a sustainable way.
The new members will strengthen the NEB Steering Committee\’s expertise in food security and advanced engineering of health technologies.
Isha Datar, Executive Director of New Harvest, a donor-funded research institute advancing the science behind cultured meat. Isha has been pioneering cellular agriculture since 2009, driven by a passion to create a better world with transformative technologies. In 2010, Isha published “Possibilities for an in-vitro meat production system,” in Innovative Food Science and Emerging Technologies; thus beginning her quest to establish the field of cellular agriculture. She co-founded Muufri (now Perfect Day) and Clara Foods in 2014 and soon after passed her founding equity to New Harvest in full to establish the first endowment for research related to agriculture products produced from cell cultures. In 2015, she named the field “cellular agriculture,” officially creating a category for agriculture products produced from cell cultures rather than whole plants or animals.
Dr. Sheila Singh is a professor of surgery and biochemistry, chief pediatric neurosurgeon at McMaster Children\’s Hospital, Division Head of Neurosurgery at Hamilton Health Sciences, and scientist appointed to the Stem Cell and Cancer Research Institute at McMaster University. Since 2007, Dr. Singh\’s lab applies a developmental neurobiology framework to the study of brain tumorigenesis. She holds a Tier 1/ Senior Canada Research Chair in Human Brain Cancer Stem Cell Biology and is Director of the McMaster Surgeon Scientist Program. She is the scientific founder and interim CEO of a start-up company, Empirica Therapeutics, a brain cancer therapeutics company that is seeking new, data-driven, and polytherapeutic treatment options for patients with glioblastoma and brain metastases. Empirica (recently acquired by Century Therapeutics) aims to translate research discoveries co-developed at McMaster University and University of Toronto through clinical trials and into the clinic.
Ontario Genomics congratulates our two new Steering Committee members on their appointments and welcomes the expertise and valuable perspective they bring to the team.