Sunil Chandran

Sunil Chandran is a veteran industrial biotechnology leader and the Chief Science Officer at Impossible Foods. Sunil joined the company in June 2023 to lead its R&D and innovation departments, with a focus on improving Impossible’s existing products and introducing new innovations to its award-winning product portfolio. 

Prior to Impossible, Sunil was the Chief Science Officer and Head of R&D at Amyris Inc., where he spent more than 17 years bringing new fermentation-derived ingredients to market. While at Amyris, he oversaw multiple research programs focused on commercializing various molecules and was the primary architect of the world-class Automated Strain Engineering (ASE) platform. Notably in 2015, Sunil 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. 

Sunil 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.