Meet MIT Tech Review's Innovator of the Year: David Berry

Posted by Chris Flanagan on August 19, 2008

I first met BIF-4 storyteller David Berry last fall during a ‘Green Design’ symposium at the offices of Continuum in Boston. David is a principle at Flagship Ventures, a company well known for funding clean and environmentally sound technologies and he shared some mind boggling possibilities for the future. His firm is looking at everything from carbon nanotubes to solar quantum dots to synthetic biology. David is more than just a venture capitalist – he’s also an innovator with 44 patents under his belt. His talk highlighted some of the many untapped possibilities in the future of living green.

He’s one of the brightest guys I’ve had the pleasure of getting to know. BIF sat down recently with David and here’s his game-changer story…

David Berry: Thinking Big with Microorganisms
After finishing a bachelor’s degree in neuroscience at MIT in 2000 and reaching the thesis stage of his medical training at Harvard University, David Berry asked himself what most people would not ask themselves at this point: Why not throw in a Ph.D. thesis in biological engineering, too?

Indeed, why not? Berry calls his combined degrees an “ad hoc M.D.-Ph.D.” And despite the incredible focus and determination he needed to accomplish such a feat in six years, he is disarmingly relaxed and personable. He just likes to do things fast.

With its post-doctoral and residency requirements, traditional medical school training would have prolonged the day when Berry started what he calls his first “real job.” As his research interests gravitated from the life science space to the energy space, he realized that the Ph.D. research component of his degree would enable him to get into the heady atmosphere of scientific discovery sooner rather than later. He was fascinated with the idea of “developing things”—finding ways to serve humanity in the most positive ways possible, like curing diseases and solving energy problems. “Inputs and outputs,” he calls it.

“I was looking for technologies that could have significant impact,” Berry says, “and I didn’t want it to take a long time.”

Currently holding 44 patents, serving as a principal for the Boston-based Flagship Ventures, and acting as CEO for several biotech companies, Berry has put his time to good use. Last year he was named Innovator of the Year by MIT Technology Review for his efforts to create a new source of petroleum by altering the metabolic machinery of microorganisms. With the price of crude oil over $130 a barrel (and counting) there has been a major resurgence of interest in “designer biofuels” that were first discussed seriously in the 1970s during the nation’s last major fuel crisis.

The key to designer biofuels has been to find a cellulose feedstock, such as corn or sugar, that can be produced in significant and usable quantities. But market forces have their effect. Since the cost of corn doubled between 2005 and 2006 after ethanol was touted as the new homegrown alternative to oil, Berry recognized the need to identify a microorganism with a more stable price point.

His venture company, LS9 is currently experimenting with the possibility of turning E. coli into petroleum. “I’m interested in having a technology that is robust enough that it can excite the minds of people, and be a real sustainable company,” Berry says. “I’m looking for companies that can really change the way people think in certain areas.” Using E. coli to solve the world’s fuel problems will most definitely change the way people think.

Pushing the frontiers of synthetic biology and industrial biotechnology, LS9 has created industrial microbes that efficiently convert renewable feedstocks to a portfolio of "drop in compatible" hydrocarbon-based fuels and chemicals. LS9's unique technology provides a means to genetically control the structure and function of its fuels, enabling a product portfolio that meets the diverse demands of the petroleum economy.

 LS9 has developed a new means of efficiently converting fatty acid intermediates into petroleum replacement products via fermentation of renewable sugars. LS9 has also discovered and engineered a new class of enzymes and their associated genes to efficiently convert fatty acids into hydrocarbons. Berry believes this pathway is the most cost, resource, and energy-efficient way to produce hydrocarbon biofuels and petroleum-replacement products and says this translates into efficient land and feedstock use and directly addresses tensions between food versus fuel production.

To fully commercialize any innovative technology, Berry keeps in mind the interests of the various stakeholders around the table at Flagship Ventures. “I’m a scientist first, a business person second,” he says. “But most of the conversations I have on a day-to-day basis are with entrepreneurs. I have to get in touch with the technology while seeing things from their standpoint. I want to be on the same side of the table as them.”

Looking for the right technologies sometimes means building a company from scratch. In that case, traditional diligence measures that assess the viability of a project and the quality of its intellectual property (i.e., people) do not necessarily apply. “We have to spell out what an opportunity is,” Berry says. “Why do we care about it? It’s one thing to come up with an idea. It’s another thing to go after it. The question is, can you go the whole nine yards with it? Can you go 10?”

For Berry, going the distance means starting the day with a “prepared mind.” He arrives at his office in Cambridge every morning at 7 a.m. after working out and reading a selection of newspapers and the most current science periodicals. Then, for the next several hours, he’ll interact with some of the world’s leading scientists. It’s a part of the job Berry says he enjoys more than anything else.“I don’t like thinking about things as just a simple project,” he explains. “I like thinking about them as more of a global problem.”

Surrounding himself with top thinkers who can either corroborate or punch holes in his sometimes outlandish theories gives Berry the self-confidence to stay innovative. “You have to have a willingness to be wrong,” he says. “But I also know you can’t find really big solutions to things unless you’re taking risks.”

Berry attributes his inclination to see beyond the ordinary to the influence of Dr. Bob Langer, his thesis advisor at MIT who encouraged him to push the envelope in the bio-medical sphere. “He taught me the concept of think big. If you want to go after a problem, go after a big one.”

Finding a viable alternative energy source to reduce our dependence on foreign oil and shrink the carbon footprint of the world—that’s a big one.

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