Melanie Tomczak | Head of Programs | Chief Technology Officer
Melanie Tomczak is BioMADE’s Head of Programs and Chief Technology Officer. Her scientific expertise is in co-opting what nature does well through biotechnology, biochemistry, and biosensor development. To her role as CTO, Melanie brings expertise in building diverse technical teams to tackle complicated projects and achieve program goals. Prior to joining BioMADE in 2022, she was Director of Biological and Nanoscale Technologies at UES, Inc. During her tenure at UES, Melanie grew the “bio group” from 5 to 95 employees through winning competitive Air Force Research Laboratory on-site contracts repeatedly as well as being awarded 15+ Small Business Innovation Research grants from agencies including NIH, USDA, EPA, DTRA, DARPA and Army. She was a founding governing council member of the Nano Bio Manufacturing Consortium (NBMC) and served as Co-Chair of the Technical Working Group, and was active with several Manufacturing Innovation Institutes. Dr. Tomczak was a postdoctoral fellow in Biochemistry at Queen’s University, Canada. She holds a Ph.D. in Plant Biology from the University of California – Davis, where she was an NSF-sponsored Plant Cell Biology Trainee, and a B.S. from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, where she was both a Hugh Morrison Scholar and a Jonathan Baldwin Turner Scholar.