Sunil Chandran
Chief Science Officer & Head of R&D

Sunil Chandran leads Amyris research and development including collaborations as Chief Science Officer & Head of Research & Development. Previously, he was appointed Senior Vice President of Research and Development in 2019. With more than 15 years of experience in industrial biotechnology, he has a proven track record of bringing multiple biotech products to market. Since joining Amyris in 2006, Sunil has led multiple metabolic engineering focused projects, and was the primary architect of our world-class Automated Strain Engineering (ASE) platform. Notably in 2015, Sunil was the principal investigator who led an ambitious project that earned Amyris a $35 million Technology Investment Agreement from the US Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA). Prior to joining Amyris, Sunil was a scientist at Kosan Biosciences, where he studied the ability of polyketide synthases to make novel pharmaceutical drug candidates. He has more than 20 published scientific papers, book chapters, and patents and has been an invited speaker at numerous international conferences on biotechnology. He holds a BS in chemistry from the University of Mumbai, an MS in chemistry from the Indian Institute of Technology, Mumbai, and a Ph.D. in chemistry from Michigan State University. Sunil also completed a post-doctoral fellowship in chemistry and biochemistry at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.