Leopoldo Naranjo-Briceño, Ph.D.

 

​Growing up near Simón Bolívar University (USB) in Caracas, Venezuela, I spent much of my childhood exploring the woods with my identical twin brother and friends. Also, my family and I would visit Bahia de Cata (Edo. Aragua) and my uncle’s farm every summer. All those adventures in the Caribbean Sea and the wilderness fueled my interest in nature. When I finished high school, I decided to pursue an Agronomy Engineering degree offered jointly by Universidad Central de Venezuela (UCV) and Universidad Nacional Experimental “Francisco de Miranda” (UNEFM) in the beautiful city of Coro, which is named "the root of Venezuela", because was the first city of my country founded in 1527. While studying at UNEFM and during my summer holidays between 1995 and 1998, I completed several research internships in the Soil Ecology Laboratory of the Center for Ecology and Environmental Sciences at the Venezuelan Institute for Scientific Research (IVIC), under the scientific direction of eminent Dr. Gisela Cuenca. Also, I am undertaking a research internship with Dr. Elizabeth Olivares at the Plant Ecophysiology Lab within the same Center. Additionally, I was a scholarship student for five years at the Research Center in Ecology and Arid Zones (CIEZA-UNEFM), under the scientific direction of the prestigious and esteemed Dr. Miriam Díaz de Arends. In both research institutions (IVIC and CIEZA), I studied and applied arbuscular mycorrhizal fungi (AMF) in depth to enhance the productivity (including ecophysiological and growth parameters) of the succulent plant Agave cocui (colloquially named "cocuy de penca") in arid and semi-arid regions of Venezuela. Indigenous communities ancestrally use this xerophyte plant to obtain a spiritual distillate very similar to tequila. ​After 333 resilient days of sampling cocuy seedlings with the help of the beautiful community of Pecaya to process them in the laboratory, marking the culmination of my Thesis experimental design. I successfully obtained my Agronomist Engineering degree with honours in December 1998. I was ready for whatever the future had in store for me. At this time, a significant contribution to focusing on the next challenges of my life was my initiation into the field of meditation.

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Not even a year had passed, and I was heading toward Spain to continue my studies, this time at the postgraduate level. This journey changed my whole life, and I was accompanied by my resilient wife, Mónica, and my little daughter, Daniela, who was one year old at the time. A scholarship from AECID, awarded by the Spanish government (Programa Mutis) in 1999, gave me the unique chance to complete a European Doctoral Program in "Molecular Biology and Biotechnology" at the University of León (UNILEON) on June 13th, 2003. Between 2003 and December 2004, I undertook a Postdoctoral Fellowship at the renowned Institute of Biotechnology of León (INBIOTEC). In both cases, under the scientific guidance of the eminent Dr. Juan Francisco Martín Martín, becoming one of the last "Mohicans" of the revolutionary scientific group named "Los Penicilinos" in those times, who were unquestionable pioneers in the design and application of genetic engineering tools in filamentous fungi. This is how my journey as a researcher in genetic engineering of filamentous fungi began; in this case, developing a deep knowledge of the genetic and metabolic engineering of filamentous fungi and discovering new biotechnological compounds with interesting biological activities for human health.

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In 2005, I returned to Venezuela with Mónica, Daniela and Aitana, who was born in León in 2000, to serve as an Associate Researcher at the Fundación Instituto de Estudios Avanzados (IDEA) in Caracas (Venezuela) for over 10 years. I also held positions as Head of the Petroleum Biotechnology Unit at the Biotechnology Centre of IDEA, Director of the Energy and Environmental Area, principal member of the Board of Directors and as President at IDEA. I will always be proud that my exceptional R&D team in IDEA was a pioneer in the fields of Petroleum Biotechnology and Environmental Biocatalysis, becoming a global reference with an extensive list of scientific contributions, including R&D Conference, proceedings, papers, patents, training of next generation of human talent, founding member of different scientific organizations, and raising external funding and grants for more than 9 million dollars. At international levels, I also became Regional Representative of the Latin American Association of Mycology (ALMIC), Vocal and Vice Gestor of the Iberoamerican Program for Science and Technology (Programa CYTED, Madrid, Spain) for 4 years, and Liaison Officer at the International Centre for Genetic Engineering and Biotechnology (ICGEB, Trieste, Italy) for 10 consecutive years. In this stage of my life, running in 2012, I found an incredible spiritual expansion when I did the Indian transcendental meditation technique called Vipassana, which I maintain to date.

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​In 2017, during the exponential phase of my scientific career and at 48 years old, the difficult political situation in Venezuela forced me to continue my academic/scientific pathway in other unimaginable latitudes. What I didn't know was that life had beautiful things in store for me. After one year of fighting alone in Ecuador, Mónica, Daniela, Aitana, and my dear little daughter Emma, who was born in Caracas in 2013, finally joined me, but this time in the heart of the jungle. I participated in a merit and competitive examination for the chair of Applied Mycology at the Universidad Regional Amazónica Ikiam, where I worked as a permanent Professor and Researcher between 2017 and 2022. Ikiam, meaning "jungle" in the Achuar indigenous language, is a young and growing university rooted in the heart of the Amazon rainforest in Muyuna. In this “Avatar tree,” I also served as the Director of the Microbial Biotechnology Lab, the Director of the R&D Team on Applied Microbiology (MicApp), the Principal Director of a dozen of interesting R&D Projects, and Tutor of numerous bachelor's degree thesis, harnessing the enormous microbial biodiversity hidden in the Amazon rainforest waiting to be discovered. In this case, my contributions to science and technology were mainly focused on the rational use of microbial and genetic diversity to develop environmentally friendly, high-added-value biotechnological products for sustainable development and conservation of nature (see R&D Projects section). Here, I lived with my wife and our three beautiful daughters in peace, experiencing real and mystical contact with nature and the rainforest spirits.

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At the end of 2019, I embarked on an epic journey to San Francisco, CA (USA), which changed my life. While I was supporting a seed Start-Up at IndieBio SF in Class 9, I had the amazing opportunity to meet with Phil Ross, Co-Founder and CTO at MycoWorks, a Silicon Valley-based pioneering biotechnology company that produces Reishi™, a non-animal, non-plastic option for fine leather using fungal mycelium. At that moment, MycoWorks was seeking leading experts in the field of mushroom science and research (mycology) to create the Scientific Advisory Board (SAB) to guide the advancement of MycoWorks' current and future mycelium materials, and they offered me the incredible option to be one of them. The lens of my perception took a very interesting turn when I began to develop a vision without frontiers and a level of awareness of co-inhabiting in the middle of two radically different but not mutually exclusive worlds. At one extreme, I was linked to a company established in Silicon Valley, where the technological future of the rest of the world's nations is being built, while, at the other extreme, I was swoned in one of the most pristine and biodiverse regions on planet Earth.

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In the middle of 2020, I was working very hard to execute my diverse R&D Projects, including those emerging Projects to fight against COVID-19 (see R&D Projects section), when I received a surprise message from my friend Dr. Pablo Zamora: the co-founders of Spora were inviting me to join them as R&D Director. 

 

But this story is just beginning...