Neil Dalvie is a chemical engineer. During his PhD, he worked to develop microbial hosts for low-cost manufacturing of therapeutic proteins, which could expand global access to vaccines and antibodies.
As a Schmidt Science Fellow, Neil will pivot from Chemical Engineering to Biogeochemistry, working with Professor Pamela Silver at Harvard Medical School to develop microbes that accelerate the weathering and dissolution of silicate minerals. This technology could enable safe marine carbon sequestration and mining of critical metals. Neil envisions that mineral processes in the future will benefit from genetic engineering techniques that are routinely deployed to manufacture medicines. Conversely, learnings from large scale environmental processes may lower production costs for foods and pharmaceuticals.
Neil is passionate about teaching and mentoring students. He hopes to inspire and train a new class of process engineers that bridge the gap between high-tech pharmaceutical processes and large-scale environmental processes.