Phoenix BioConsulting, LLC provides scientific consulting and expert witness services for the microbial fermentation, industrial microbiology, biofuels, and biotechnology sectors.  Neal Connors, Ph.D. started the company after a 17 year research career in the Bioprocess R&D department at Merck & Co. 

Phoenix provides companies and organizations with the expertise and experience of a seasoned industrial scientist at a frequency and for the duration required.  This can be a flexible and cost-effective approach for providing scientific expertise for an organization without having to hire a full-time, permanent, senior staff member.  This is a very attractive solution for small start-ups who need to fill an expertise gap.

Unlike consultants from academia who provide periodic, retrospective project reviews, Phoenix provides consulting services in real-time to keep your project on-track.

Areas of Expertise

• Microbial fermentation development and production (natural products, metabolites, recombinant proteins, biocatalysts).
• Expert Witness (patent litigation) 
• Therapeutic or drug target protein production by cell culture.
• Microbial strain improvement and high-throughput screening
• Statistical experimental design
• Subject matter expertise (technical writing, due diligence, etc.) 

 Value Proposition

Total employment costs (salary, benefits, taxes, overhead) for a full-time, permanent staff member can range from 50-100% over salary.  In addition there are recruiting costs, typically 30% of the first year's compensation, and on-boarding costs which can include relocation, sign-on bonus, training, etc.

With Phoenix, high-level scientific expertise is provided for a fee which is based on the frequency of consulting activities and the project's duration (a few days to several months).  Consulting fees can be hourly or project based.

This staffing paradigm is particularly beneficial for start-up companies.  These companies need scientific expertise to meet milestones prior the next round of VC funding or IPO but may not have the financial resources to hire a full-time, permanent senior scientist.

Example Projects:

Sustainable biochemical production by microbial fermentation.

Scale-up troubleshooting

Antigen production by heterologous expression in yeast.

Expert witness cases (inventorship, lost revenue, infringement)

CRO small scale protein production.

Business and manufacturing strategy development

Contact Phoenix to discuss your specific project needs at no cost or obligation. All information is treated as confidential.

Upcoming Society for Industrial Microbiology and Biotechnology Meetings (links):

34th Symposium on Biotechnology for Fuels and Chemicals (April 30 - May 3, 2012, New Orleans, LA)

SIMB Annual Meeting (August 12-16, 2012, Washington DC)

Recent Advances in Microbial Control (October 28-31, 2012, Alexandria, VA)