Dr. Erik de Vries studied Organic Chemistry at the University of Groningen in The Netherlands. After obtaining his PhD in 1997 and during 8 years of postdoc, he started his own spin-off company involved in enzymatic technology. After a successful sale of the company to Codexis in 2006, Inc, he moved to California to work at Codexis in various functions with increasing responsibility. After Codexis, Erik was Technical Sales Manager LifeTech Resins at Purolite, Sales Manager North America at the strain engineering company Amyris and then West Coast BD Manager at the Swiss pharma contract manufacturer Dottikon Exclusive Synthesis AG.
After moving back to his home base in The Netherlands in 2018, Erik started his own biotechnology consulting company and has been involved worldwide in the early stages of numerous biotech and deep tech start-up initiatives. Erik is currently the CEO of the biotech Enzymicals AG (Greifswald, Germany) and he is a member of the (Technical) Advisory Boards of FabricNano Ltd (London, UK), and of Allozymes.