About 30% of the edible parts of food produced for human consumption is lost or wasted, corresponding to about 1.3 billion tonnes of food per year globally. Because of this, 1.4 billion hectares of land and about 250 km³ of water are wasted per year.
For example, in land-scarce Singapore, almost all raw materials for food manufacturing are imported. According to National Environment Agency (NEA), in 2020, 665 thousand tonnes of food waste was generated. About half of the total food waste came from industry and commercial facilities.
Mycosortia would like to reduce such food wastage and we believe that microbial biotransformation is the game changer. Mycosortia focuses on the upcycling of the fiber- and protein-rich food side streams, such as okara, and wheat bran, to high-value functional ingredients, using our proprietary microbial biotransformation technology. Our process is very scalable, and it does not use any chemicals and commercial enzymes. It generates no waste, using less land and less water.
Our Founders
Cofounder and Director: Mr. Sun Feng
Mr. Sun Feng was trained in Life Sciences. He has more than 20 years R&D experiences in microbiology, biochemistry and molecular biology. He has worked in National University of Singapore and National Cancer Center, having hands-on experiences in mammalian cell culture. He was an entrepreneur with industrial working experiences on fermented food. He currently works for Mycosortia full-time as a Cofounder and Director to foster the commercialization of our microbial consortia fermentation technology.
Cofounder and Director: Dr. Geng Anli
Dr. Geng Anli is currently a Cofounder and Director of Mycosortia Pte Ltd. She is the President of the BioEnergy Society of Singapore (BESS). Dr. Geng has more than 20 years R&D experience, working extensively on environmental biotechnology and industrial biotechnology, having expertise in microbial strain development, fermentation and bioconversion of lignocellulosic biomass. She is a Principal Investigator and secured multi-million SGD research grants from government and industries. Her role in Mycosortia is to foster the commercialization of microbial biotransformation of protein- and fiber-rich food side streams such as okara and wheat bran to high-value functional food ingredients and products.
Our Advisors
Dr. and Prof. Pierre Monsan
Pierre Monsan (74) is Professor Emeritus at the National Institute for Applied Sciences (INSA) of the University of Toulouse, France. He was elected member of the French University Institute (IUF) in 2003 and re-elected in 2008.
He is CEO-CSO of Cell-Easy, a start-up company based in Toulouse and dedicated to the large scale production of affordable and high quality mesenchymal stem cells for clinical trials.
He is Founding Director of the pre-industrial demonstrator “Toulouse White Biotechnology (TWB)”, which was granted M€ 20 within the frame of the French National Program “Investissement d’avenir” in March 2011 (www.toulouse-white-biotechnology.com).
He has been active for 44 years in the field of enzyme catalysis (enzyme production, purification, immobilization and application, screening, structural characterization and molecular design). He authored more than 240 scientific publications, 3 books and 65 patents. His H-factor is 52.
He was involved in the founding of several start-up companies: BioEurope (1984, now Solabia Group), BioTrade (1996), Genibio (1998, now Pileje Group) and in the move of LibraGen (now Givaudan Active Beauty) from Lyon to Toulouse (2004).
He is member of the Scientific Advisory Board of several companies, founding member of the French Academy of Technology, member of the French National Academy of Agriculture, member of several Scientific Societies and member of the College of Fellows of the American Institute for Medical and Biological Engineering (AIMBE). He is founder and Honorary Chairman of the French Federation of Biotechnology (FFBiotech), ex-member of the Executive Board of the European Federation of Biotechnology (EFB).
Dr. and Prof. Tong Yen Wah
Associate Professor Tong Yen Wah joined the Department of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering at the National University of Singapore (NUS) in 2001 after graduating from the University of Toronto with a PhD in Chemical Engineering. His expertise is in biomaterials research for tissue engineering and in bioenergy from food wastes and biomass wastes, with over 200 publications and 10000 citations. His recent works in food wastes management has been successfully commercialized with distributed anaerobic digesters that can be effectively used in cities through a spin-off company from NUS. Dr Tong is currently the co-Programme Director for a NRF CREATE programme with Shanghai Jiao Tong University (SJTU) on “Energy and Environmental Sustainability Solutions for Megacities”, E2S2-CREATE, a collaborative research programme between NUS and SJTU funded by the Singapore National Research Foundation for S$89 million on studying coupled problems in megacities related to energy, environment, health and waste.
Dr. and Prof. Sushila Chang
Sushila holds a PhD in Cellular Biology and Toxicology from the University of Paris 7, France, Graduate Certificate in Intellectual Property Law from the National University of Singapore, and Bachelor of Science (Hons) from the University of London. She has extensive experience as a Senior Academic in Singapore, Australia, UK and Fiji. She was Professor and Biotechnology Co Ordinator at The University of Queensland; Academic Dean of the Sciences Group ( or Sciences, Environment and Technology Group ) with Griffith University; Deputy Vice Chancellor at Cardiff Metropolitan University and Vice Chancellor of University of Fiji. She was first non-north American to co- chair and chair the Board of the International Life Sciences Institute(2008-2012) and continues to be Trustee and Treasurer. She was also elected President of the Singapore Society for Microbiology and Biotechnology for 6 one year terms. Sushila is passionate about and researches in the area of environmental toxicology, food biotechnology and the green economy. She is currently consulting to Coventry University (Singapore) and University of Bordeaux, France and director of Uni-Recruit.