Katarina Midelfort
Principal Engineer & Entrepreneur
Katarina Midelfort is an Entrepreneurs Bootcamp alum, award winner, and mentor to early stage startups. She's the Co-Founder of Purplewood Farm, located in Stamping Ground, Kentucky. She's also a pitch competition champion and has also been featured in Lexington, Kentucky's StartupLex as their featured entrepreneur.
"I am excited about entrepreneurship. innovation, strategy, project management, and planning. I am driven to find new solutions to industrial and/or agricultural biotech problems and increase productivity. I have a strong background in Microbial Fermentation & Bioprocess Engineering, Biocatalysis, and Protein and Metabolic Engineering for the synthesis of nutritional lipids, flavors & fragrances, pharmaceutical intermediates, food cultures, fine and commodity chemicals, metabolites, and other proteins and small molecules.
Through a range of graduate, postdoctoral, and industrial research opportunities, I have developed both a deep understanding of protein and metabolite expression, bioprocess production and purification methods, structure/function relationships, protein design, and process optimization, and a breadth in multidisciplinary biotechnology research.
My industrial experiences have allowed participation in team-oriented, product focused, corporate research and development environments. I have earned my LSS Black Belt, Project Management Associate Certificate and attended up-to-date fermentation engineering training offered by the Biomanufacturing Training and Education Center at North Carolina State University.
I lead by example and use data driven decision making. I love to think about new opportunities."
Email: kmidelfort@gmail.com
