Redefining better for
you with food that’s
better for the world

Dr. Ilan Samish

Founder & CEO

Dr. Ilan Samish is a leading multidisciplinary entrepreneur and expert in computational protein design, genetics, biochemistry, and computational biology who has worked in top-notch multidisciplinary teams. He has a Ph.D. from Weizmann, a postdoc from the University of Pennsylvania, and an academic career at Weizmann, Hebrew U., and Braude.

Wouter Claerhout

CMO

Wouter brings 25+ years of B2B experience in sales, marketing & commercial management to the global commercialization of Amai Proteins. Wouter is former Head of Global Marketing –Human Nutrition and Health at Royal DSM. Wouter worked and lived in Belgium, Italy, The Netherlands, Switzerland, and Singapore.

Charles Gast

VP Business Development

Charles is an experienced senior manager and has held CEO, Country Manager and VP positions in both start- up companies and multinational companies such as Unilever, Abbott Laboratories, The Hershey Company and more.  Charles has worked in wide range of industries including Biotechnology, Pharmaceuticals, Food Technology, and Clean Technology.  He has an MBA from Baruch College, The City University of New York in the US.

Anat Serber

VP People & Impact

Anat Serber is a senior HR professional with >17 years of experience and outstanding performance. Among other, she worked in global companies, in a relocation position, in the biotech industry and in additional startup in the food tech industry.

Yigal Gezundhait

Chief Production Officer

Yigal Gezundhait was an R&D manager for eight years (Teva & Vitamed Pharmaceuticals), a business development manager (8 yrs, Rafa Labs), and CEO of BotanoCap (10 yrs).

Sam (Shmuel) Marko

VP Food Technology

Shmuel Marko was the CTO of Materna and food CTO of SodaStream, which, during his tenure, grew from a $6M company to over $3B.

Dr. Hagay Shmuely

Director of Biotechnology

Dr. Hagay Shmuely is an expert on industrial-scale production and protein purification. He was VP R&D of Protein Production Services, where he led a staff of 15 and developed over 150 protein production process. He has a Ph.D. from Ben Gurion U.

Dr. Naama Kopelman

Director of Computational Protein Design

Dr. Yael Lifshitz

Director of Clinical and Regulatory Affairs

Dr. Yael Lifshitz has over 15 years of experience as an R&D director in clinical and regulatory affairs, including leading clinical scientific research projects, and food safety studies of novel food ingredients world-wide. Yael has a Ph.D. in Biochemistry at the Weizmann Institute of Sciences.

Inbar Zuker

Head of Sensory Evaluation and Food Technologist

Inbar Zuker is a food technologist with more than 25 years of experience in sensory evaluation, including sensory consultancy and guidance for the Food & Beverage industry. She has M.Sc. in Biochemistry and Food Science from the Hebrew University.

Sally Sharof Kayuf

Fermentation Manager

Sally has vast experience in process development management, scale-up to pilot and production scale, fermentation, and other processes. She worked as a Process engineer at Shemen Industries Ltd. (4 years) and as the Head of fermentation at Nextferm (5 years). Sally has a B.Sc in Biochemical engineering from the Technion.

Marina Kashdan

Application Manager

Marina Kashdan is a food technologist with a B.Sc. in biochemistry and food science from the Hebrew University and a M.Sc. in Chemistry from the Weizmann institute of science. She has varied experience in the food industry, managing projects from the concept stage to market implementation.

Sandra Troian

Pilot Manager

Sandra is an experienced chemical engineer, with a B.Sc from Ben Gurion University.

Sandra has accumulated experience working at a global biopharmaceutical company and is specializing in large scale production and automation projects.

Adva Yeheskel

Variants Pipeline Manager

Adva is an experienced computational structural biologist , with an M.Sc from Tel Aviv University, specialized in protein motion.
Adva has accumulated knowledge and expertise in an impressively wide range of tools and methodologies of structural biology, working at TAU bioinformatics unit, contributing to more than 35 published peer-reviewed scientific papers.  This strong foundation prepared her for further specialization in structure-based and ligand-based drug discovery at the Blavatnik Center for Drug Discovery.

Dr. Amit Kessel

Senior Scientist

Dr. Kessel is a senior computational biophysicist with over twenty-five years of experience in academia and industry. He earned his Ph.D. from Tel-Aviv University and conducted a postdoctoral fellowship at Columbia University in New York. He co-founded Es-is Technologies, a startup that harnessed enzymes for pharmaceutical applications, where he spearheaded the company’s research and development. He is the author of two textbooks, and as a Research Fellow at Tel-Aviv University, has taught courses on protein science.