Heliae Rings In New Year With New Hires And IP

Heliae, an Arizona-based algae technology company, announced today the hiring of three key team members as well as three significant additions to its expanding portfolio of intellectual property.

“These new hires and intellectual property build on the tremendous momentum we generated in 2011,” said Heliae’s President and CEO Dan Simon. “The progress we’ve achieved at our demonstration facility coupled with the addition of seasoned industry experts represents the final step in preparing Heliae for commercial operations.”

The three new team members are Adrian Galvez as Vice President of Manufacturing, Anna Lee Tonkovich as Vice President of Research and Development, and Mike Rohlfsen as Director of Business Development for Food & Feed.

Galvez, an internationally recognized expert in biomass processing, has a proven track record of successfully commercializing new technologies. He joins Heliae from his recent role as Senior Vice President of Engineering at Solazyme. Dr. Tonkovich, a named inventor on more than 90 patents, joins Heliae from her recent post as founder and Chief Technology Officer at Velocys where she helped take a variety of bio-energy products and processes from the lab to the marketplace. And, Rohlfsen, an industry veteran who held several positions at agri-business giant Cargill, joins Heliae from his recent role as Vice President of Business Development at PetroAlgae.

The United States Patent and Trademark Office issued patent number 8,084,038 to Heliae entitled “Methods of and Systems for Isolating Nutraceutical Products from Algae” on December 27, 2011. Heliae has received a Notice of Allowance from the USPTO for two additional patent applications focused on Heliae’s breakthrough extraction technology. These patents are expected to issue in the first half of February.

“Heliae is simultaneously committed to innovation and commercialization,” said Tonkovich. “Because Heliae’s state-of-the-art demonstration facility is engineered for rapid learning and product refinement we can offer a continuous pipeline of valuable technical solutions. I’m very excited to join the team.”