Get to know the Operation Breeding Team
Updated: Jun 17, 2022
We are back with another post of our ‘Meet The Team’ Series! In today’s episode, we are featuring not just our full-timer but also the interns in our team to share a little about their experience here.
Kicking off with the first half of our operation team that handles the breeding of our insects, we have Ryan, Raj, Adam, Justus and Divanan. Here at Insect Feed Technologies, our breeding team provides the direction of production functions for commercial farming of Black Soldier Fly and develop systems to forecast, plan, manage and analyse data for insect breeding and designing production metrics and targets.
Hi! I'm Ryan!
Q: Tell us about your role in Insect Feed Technologies and what you do
Ryan: I am currently overseeing operational activities at Insect Feed Technologies, ensuring that the workforce is productive and developing capabilities for us to scale up.
Q: What is the most interesting or impactful project that you have worked on so far and why?
Ryan: Being able to join in on the company's business trip to Malaysia. It was refreshing to tag along with our CEO, Sean, observing how strategic and visionary decisions are made.
Q: What are your personal or professional goals for the future?
Ryan: My goals involve growing with a company where I can continue learn from great leaders and gain valuable experiences. At the same time, I hope to be able to contribute as much value as I can and create a positive impact.
Q: If you could instantly become an expert in something, what would it be?
Ryan: An expert in mushroom cultivation. Did you know that mushrooms are genetically closer to humans than plants?
Hello, I’m Raj!
Q: Tell us about your role in Insect Feed Technologies and what you do
Raj: I am working as a Research and Development Production Operator ensuring that there is a constant supply of eggs which would then hatch into hatchlings for the conversion of food waste into finished insect products.
Q: What is the most interesting or impactful project that you have worked on so far and why?
Raj: The most interesting project I have worked on is the optimisation of The Nursery conditions. The Nursery is a controlled environment in which we rear hatchlings from when they are 0 Day Old Larvae (0-DOL) up till they are 5-DOL. During this stage, the larvae are nearly invisible to the naked eye and extremely delicate, thus requiring precise care and monitoring in order to thrive. We can house up to millions of hatchlings at any given time!
Q: What are your personal or professional goals for the future?
Raj: My professional goal for the future would be to make an impactful change in the world with agriculture.
Q: If you could instantly become an expert in something, what would it be?
Raj: I would like to be an expert in the Human Relations field.
Hello, I’m Adam!
Q: Tell us about your role in Insect Feed Technologies and what you do
Adam: I started off as a feed nutrition intern where I was responsible for developing SOPs and optimising the feeding of production larvae. Eventually, I transitioned towards the breeding side of BSF (as I was more interested in entomology) where I helped with the Research and Development of optimising our hatchling survival rates and egg production among other things.
Q: What is the most interesting or impactful project that you have worked on so far and why?
Adam: The most interesting project for me is 'Project Big Chungus' (50% because of the research objective, 50% because of the name), where the initial goal was to completely maximise larvae size to increase egg production. This actually led to us developing problems in our fly breeding cages, where these 'big chungus' larvae may have caused a female-dominant population to develop. This, in turn, led to us shifting our research focus on sex determination of BSF, as current literature is unsure as to how gender is determined in BSFs.
Q: What are your personal or professional goals for the future?
Adam: Personal goal is to probably conduct research in an area of biology linked to sustainability or ecology. As for professional goal, probably to work in an institution such as the NEA or WRS where it'll be focused on ecological research.
Q: If you could instantly become an expert in something, what would it be?
Adam: Ants. Ants are cool, and there are so many different types of ants with many different behaviours.
Hi there, I’m Justus!
Q: Tell us about your role in Insect Feed Technologies and what you do
Justus: My role here is to plan and conduct experiments on how to optimise the breeding of BSF and rearing of newborn larvae as well as conducting research on BSF related literature and applying the newfound knowledge to real life.
Q: What is the most interesting or impactful project that you have worked on so far and why?
Justus: The Republic Polytechnic 40 feet container project so far has been one of the more interesting projects I've been working on currently as it involves on automating the whole process of breeding and rearing of BSF larvae.
Q: What are your personal or professional goals for the future?
Justus: My personal goal is to do something meaningful yet financially rewarding.
Q: If you could instantly become an expert in something, what would it be?
Justus: Almost there. I would like to be a football expert to play professional football in Europe and eventually retire as legend.
Nice to meet you, I’m Divanan!
Q: Tell us about your role in Insect Feed Technologies and what you do
Divanan: I’m an Operations and Research and Development intern from Republic Polytechnic. I work closely together with the breeding team in the Research and Development facility.
Q: What is the most interesting or impactful project that you have worked on so far and why
Divanan: The most interesting project that I was involved in is the Rearing Unit Project also known as ‘Project Big Chungus’ where it aims to rear the 5 Day-Old-Larvae (DOL) until they are placed into the dark cage. This was an interesting experiment for me as we tried to make the larvae as huge as possible by experimenting with different larvae-to-feed ratios which resulted in huge Black Soldier Flies (BSF).
Q: What are your personal or professional goals for the future?
Divanan: A personal goal would be to find a degree that I am interested in after I graduate from Republic Polytechnic.
Q: If you could instantly become an expert in something, what would it be?
Divanan: If I could instantly become an expert in something, I would like to take up and learn new languages and be proficient in them.
If you are looking for a rewarding and meaningful role in a company that is delivering a real impact on the world this could be the opportunity for you. To join our team, check out our opening roles on our LinkedIn page here: https://www.linkedin.com/company/insect-feed-technologies/ for more information.