Elysia Bio - Team

Our Team

Eli Hornstein, PhD

Founder & CEO

Eli spent time with the Smithsonian, UN, and Fulbright while working as an international conservationist, before getting a PhD in plant genetic engineering in Heike Sederoff’s lab in pursuit of biotech inventions that can change the equation on sustainability. He became an expert in agricultural synthetic biology through work on biofuels, plant protein, and fertilizer-saving microbes before founding Elysia. Eli was named a 2024 Activate Fellow in support of his work in climate biotech, and has received degrees and awards from Duke, UNC, NC State Harvard Business School, the NSF, and the Robertson Scholarship. Eli named the company after Elysia chlorotica, one of his favorite animals.

Swathi Barampuram, MS

Plant Scientist

Swathi has made the jump to startup life with Elysia after almost two decades in academia! She most recently worked in Jack Wang’s forest biotechnology lab developing CRISPR-edited trees with improved growth and lower processing costs. Swathi also previously worked with a team engineering the novel Condensed Reversed Tricarboxyclic Acid Cycle for enhanced carbon uptake in plants, and spent several years working with Eli on development of a new plant trait for fungal symbiosis. Originally from Southern India, Swathi got her bachelor’s and master’s at Osmania University before moving to work in South Korea, followed in 2010 by the US.

Kurt Tsuo, MBA

Business Advisor

Kurt co-founded the plant-based carbon removal startup Graphyte. He brings startup operations and commercialization experience to Elysia from his previous roles as COO of ProducePay and Head of Growth at Farmers Business Network. Kurt also worked on the agriculture teams at Breakthrough Energy Ventures and the Gates Foundation. Kurt has a BA from Harvard College and master's in development economics from the Harvard Kennedy School.

Ajeet Hansra

Business Advisor

Ajeet is a Director at the private equity firm New Mountain Capital and has previously worked at EQT and McKinsey. He helped start Elysia after knowing Eli for over 15 years since both being awarded the prestigious Robertson Scholarship at Duke and UNC. Ajeet brings experience in business analytics and high-level investing in technology, sustainability, and healthcare to the Elysia team. Now based in New York, Ajeet is originally from Sydney, Australia and holds a degree in engineering from Duke.

Prateek Jain, PhD

Genetic Engineer

Prateek is a highly experienced plant biotechnologist who comes to Elysia from the lab of Greg Copenhaver, a renowned plant genetics expert at UNC, Chapel Hill and cofounder of the sorghum genetics company Chromatin. In his previous work, Prateek developed small molecules that enhance genetic recombination rates to accelerate plant breeding in rice and other crops. As a Research Fellow at the National Agri-Food Biotechnology Institute (NABI) in India, Prateek also engineered seedless tomatoes through rationally designed dominant-negative proteins. He holds master’s and doctoral degrees from India's Banaras Hindu University (BHU) and NABI.

Daniel Yanke

Sensing Engineer

Daniel is an electrical and computer engineer who’s worked on farm robots and remote sensing with Precision Sustainable Agriculture, as well as embedded machine learning and controlled environment agriculture. While finishing his degree at NC State University, Daniel helped design and build Elysia’s proprietary sensing system for screening methane suppressors. Although an engineer by trade, Daniel is a lover of all things biological, especially bugs: at age 14 he became the youngest-ever member of the North Carolina Entomological Society.

Dwight Armstrong, PhD

Business Advisor
‍
Dwight has over 40 years of experience in animal agriculture. He grew up on a family farm before earning his PhD in Animal Science at Purdue, then spent seven years as a professor of animal science at NC State University before being recruited to serve as the president of Akey, Inc., an Ohio-based animal nutrition company. Dwight took Akey through an acquisition by the Dutch firm Provimi before moving on to serve as the CEO of Future Farmers of America. In addition to Elysia, Dwight now serves as a board member of multiple agriculture companies and works as an expert consultant with the Context Network.

Aram Mikaelyan, PhD

Science Advisor
‍
Aram is an extreme internationalist: he was born in the former Soviet Union and raised in India before going on to a PhD in microbiology at the Max Planck Institute in Germany. He is now a professor at NC State University where he studies methanogenesis in the gut microbiomes of extraordinarily efficient wood-feeding insects. Aram advises the science team on screening of novel methane suppressors and all aspects of fundamental methane biology, and is a collaborator on active grants to Elysia from NSF and Spark Climate.

Jacqueline Olich, PhD

Strategic Advisor

Jackie has decades of academic, corporate, and non-profit leadership. A historian by training, she co-founded, grew, and sold Diba Industries, a family-owned health and diagnostics components business, before going on to serve as a faculty member at UNC Chapel Hill in history and global studies and as the VP of University Collaborations at RTI International, the science-based research organization. Jackie is a member of the Chief women’s executive network and xElle Ventures. Jackie’s worked with Elysia to strengthen its connections to the local entrepreneurship ecosystem as well as develop its strategy for the global application of its products.

Get in touch if you're interested in working with us

Get in Touch

We are building a world-class team that loves doing hard stuff to save the planet.