An experienced chemicals industry leader, Pierre-Franck Valentin’s quarter-century in surfactants business management is proving invaluable to AmphiStar as it expands its market traction and pursues its ambition to become a world leader in the biosurfactant space.

Pierre-Franck was brought in to manage AmphiStar in April 2024, at a time when the company had secured a €6m funding round to help accelerate the industrialisation of its range and strengthen its team. With his deep knowledge of the chemicals industry and experience of working with startups, Pierre-Franck is an ideal person to maximise the benefit of the funding round and to drive AmphiStar’s future strategy and growth.

Pierre-Franck holds Master of Science degrees in chemical engineering from the Ecole Nationale Supérieure des Industries Chimiques (ENSIC)as well as in management and finance , from Ecole Supérieure des Sciences Economiques et Commerciales (ESSEC) in France.

An experienced biotechnologist, Dr. Sophie Roelants co-founded AmphiStar in 2021. Initially serving as CEO, Sophie moved to the COO role where she uses her experience of leading complex scientific investigations in line with commercial needs and interests to best manage the company’s innovations in the biosurfactants field.

Prior to co-founding AmphiStar, Sophie earned a PhD in Applied Biological Sciences in 2013. After her PhD, she set up and managed a unique R&D collaboration between the University of Ghent (InBio research group) and the Bio Base Europe Pilot Plant. In addition, she set up and managed business development activities related to the joint biosurfactant technology package. As a result, she initiated and managed several (inter) national projects related to the development and scale up of microbial biosurfactant production processes as well as application development.

Sophie’s record as a researcher has resulted in more than 60 peer-reviewed publications, five book chapters and the co-inventorship of multiple patents. She has co-promoted several PhD students performing research on the development of the biosurfactant platform technology.

With her extensive experience in the biosurfactants field, Sophie is instrumental in propelling AmphiStar forward as it develops more effective production methods and higher-performance biosurfactants in years to come.

Ir. Bernd EVERAERT holds a degree in bioengineering sciences (Ghent University, 2014) and joined the Bio Base Europe Pilot Plant as an R&D engineer after performing a Master thesis there about process development for new-to-nature biosurfactants. After predominantly working on biosurfactant fermentation and downstream processing scale-up for more than 2 years, he became Team Leader Bioprocessing at the Bio Base Europe Pilot Plant.

In January 2019 Bernd moved to the Lesaffre Group to work as a Production Manager Fermentation. As head of the fermentation department, he managed a team of 30 people, implemented several technical expansions of the factory and gained extensive knowledge on large scale (>300 m³) yeast fermentations.

Ir. Karolien Maes brings experience in bioprocess engineering and scale-up to AmphiStar. With a master's degree in bioengineering sciences from Ghent University (2017), Karolien has a strong foundation in chemistry and bioprocess technology. Her expertise lies in developing and scaling of fermentative production and downstream purification of biosurfactants.

Prior to co-founding AmphiStar, Karolien led a team of process engineers at the Bio Base Europe Pilot Plant, where she successfully managed several EU and bilateral projects focused on scale-up of biomass pretreatment, fermentation, biocatalysis, and downstream processing.

Dr. ir. Sofie DE MAESENEIRE is an expert in metabolic engineering of yeasts and fungal hosts aiming for the generation of production platforms for biosurfactants and specialty carbohydrates. After obtaining her PhD on the development of a novel fungal host for enzyme production, her research focused on the development of Saccharomyces cerevisiae as a platform for the production of specialty sugars, on the development of non-conventional yeasts as a platform for the production of biosurfactants and on tool development for metabolic engineering of new (eukaryotic) production hosts.

Since 2009, she has been actively involved in the biosurfactant research performed at UGent (InBio.be). Her research, assistance and management of several national and international projects, in collaboration with several industrial partners and international research partners, resulted in about 45 peer-reviewed publications, 3 book chapters and the co-inventorship on several patents/patent applications. Her research also contributed to the foundation of the spin-off AmphiStar. At Ghent University, she currently assists several PhD students and manages several projects, while at AmphiStar she heads the Strain Development Team.