A remarkable researcher with over twenty years of experience in polymer materials and mechanical engineering, Rachael Floreani has devoted her work to ameliorating the compounding threat of food insecurity, particularly for struggling mothers.
After earning her MS and PhD from Colorado State University and completing postdoctoral work at the University of Washington, she became a professor at the University of Vermont in 2011. Her collaborative research and product development spans fields including tissue engineering, cultivated meat, anti-cancer therapeutics, and FDA-approved drug delivery implants, to name a few.
In 2022, Floreani took an entrepreneurial leap and founded Burlington Bio, a company that translates her research into a material reality for the cultivated meat industry. Integrating farming and cellular engineering, it is the first biomaterials developer to utilize milk-derived proteins as the basis for sustainable, lab-grown, and alternative meats.
Over the past year, Floreani has leveraged both her company and her research to work together with Vermont’s farmers, diverting and repurposing their agricultural waste to generate the engineering building blocks for the growing alternative meats industry. Moreover, she understands the critical importance of including more women in science and serving as a mentor to young women and non-binary students interested in STEM.
