Our Team

Ocean Exchange Team

Miguel Oliveira

VP Innovation Development, Zymergen

Miguel Oliveira has joined Zymergen on April 2018 as VP Innovation Development.

He is bringing Agri-Business innovation expertise and more than 3 decades global professional experience to help bring Zymergen’s technology into novel growth segments across many different industries.

Miguel joined Bunge in 1985 as Production & Quality Control Manager in the isolated soy protein plant in Southern Brazil. After earning his Ph.D., he became Product Manager for isolates and concentrates for Bunge in Brazil, ultimately becoming the COO of the ingredients division for Bunge Alimentos in 2000. Oliveira helped create the Solae Joint Venture (the global leader in soy proteins) with DuPont in 2003, by joining together the DuPont Protein Technologies, Central Soya and Bunge ingredients business. At Solae, Miguel held positions of increasing responsibility starting as Vice President of Meat Segment Strategy, moving to Asia Pacific Regional Vice President (Hong Kong 2004-2008) and later becoming Vice President of New Business Development (2008-2009). He returned to Bunge in July 2009 to lead the Global Innovation team and is currently based in New York. BGI was focused on sourcing next-generation technologies in four key business segments; food, feed, fuel, and fertilizer. The JV venture with Solazyme to produce vegetable oils from sugarcane sugar through algae fermentation was Bunge Global innovation main project until the sale to Corbion in 2018.

Miguel obtained his Chemical Engineering Degree from UFRGS, Porto Alegre, Brazil and Ph.D. in Food Engineering from The Norwegian Institute of Technology, Trondheim, Norway.

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Ocean Exchange invites you to learn more about Awards Program, our ecosystem and success of our award winners and participants. Together, we can chart a powerful course to help ensure the future of our oceans and the Blue Economy.

“Ocean Exchange has a platform to enable people with information that they need to know about the ocean and then to showcase new technologies that are on the forefront of really helping the ocean and the planet.”

“The quality of the content and the people who are involved with Ocean Exchange is all high end.”

“Besides funding, Ocean Exchange provides access to a wide area network of incredibly talented people in organizations that really do just want to help people.”

“Ocean Exchange is really about helping the little guys grow and in so doing, helping the big guys be better ocean citizens.”

“Ocean Exchange seems to be much more focused on bringing to light under-capitalized, wonderful new technology ideas. And it’s all about two-way access to this new technology and to the people who can help with the experience to grow that technology.”

“Ocean Exchange is a force multiplier to enable sustainable innovation.”

“Ocean Exchange is a global, novel innovation forum that has a greater ability to attract a broader range of impactful stakeholders than any other event that’s out there.”

“Unquestionably, one of Ocean Exchange’s primary strengths is how it brings together people from different paths. That makes its event a delegator experience as well as experience for an innovator or awards nominee.”

“Ocean Exchange is entirely different from any of the other organizations that I’m involved in. It is about sustainable innovation. I think it’s also very different in the extremely broad range of stakeholders that it involves.”

“There’s nothing better than going to an event or engaging with people so you walk away and say, ‘Wow!’”