TEAM

Sarad Parekh is the Chief Technology Officer at Sweetwater Energy leading all aspects of Sweetwater’s research, development, and technology implementation.

Dr. Parekh has more than 25 years of industrial experience in biochemical engineering, synthetic biology, microbiology, fermentation technology, and biomass-related process development and commercialization. Prior to joining Sweetwater Energy, he served as Vice President of Research and Development at Qteros, as well as Director of Pilot Plant Operations at Phyton Biotech, and  Global technology leader at Dow AgroSciences. Dr. Parekh also brings expertise in commercialization of various chemical and pharmaceutical operation from his experience as Section Head of Biotechnology in Technical Operations at Merck Manufacturing Division.

Dr. Parekh earned his BSc in Chemistry, MS in Microbiology and his Ph.D. in process engineering from the University Department of Chemical Technology, Mumbai. As postdoctoral research fellow he spent 4 years at  the Department of Biochemical Engineering at the University of Western Ontario, and Chemical Engineering at the University of Toronto. Dr. Parekh also spent three years as Research Fellow at the Food Engineering Department at the University of Urbana Champaign. He won a commercialization award from the Corn Marketing Board for his work production of deicing chemicals by fermentation from renewable sugars. He has several patents to his credit, more than 30 publications in peer-reviewed journals, and has edited three books on various  topics related to industrial biomass conversion, including engineering microbial strains, process improvement, scale-up and commercialization.