Back to People

Lucy Chong, PhD

Senior Associate

About

Lucy Chong is a Senior Associate at Fine Structure Ventures and focuses primarily on the biology, aerospace, and manufacturing sectors. Prior to joining FSV, Lucy gained investing experience with venture firms including Undeterred Capital and Wilson Hill Ventures. She has consulted with early-stage startups and was the first scientist hired at a stem-cell synthetic biology company.

Lucy holds a Ph.D. in Systems Biology from the California Institute of Technology where she studied synthetic biology under Michael Elowitz. She also received her undergraduate degree in Neurobiology from the University of Pennsylvania and was a visiting scholar at the Leibniz-Forshungsinstitut fur Molekulare Pharmakologie in Berlin.

  • Debut uses a proprietary platform technology called cell-free biomanufacturing to unlock and overcome the limitations of cell-based techniques. This process retains the useful parts of the cell, such as enzymes, and discards the limiting parts of the cell to overcome the barriers of traditional biomanufacturing. Debut provides access to complex and high-value ingredients for a vast number of markets.

    Learn more at debutbiotech.com.

  • Fat is the single most important sensory component in meat, but the plant oils currently used in meat alternatives lack the physical properties and flavor of animal fat. Hoxton Farms combines cell biology and mathematical modeling to produce cultivated animal fat, the key ingredient that will unlock meat alternatives that look, cook, and taste like the real thing.

    Learn more at hoxtonfarms.com.

  • Modern agriculture faces increasing challenges due to climate change and population growth. Humanity needs to produce more food to sustain a growing population while significantly reducing emissions. Current methods to improve crops are severely limited by development time and cost. Phytoform’s technology significantly speeds up trait development and implementation, producing new plant traits in months rather than years, and at a fraction of the cost of conventional breeding and GMO technologies.

    Learn more at phytoformlabs.com.