Dr. Wong joined TurtleTree as VP of External Innovation in August 2021 and was promoted to Chief Innovation Officer in August 2022. At TurtleTree, Shou leads the BD and Licensing teams by working closely with R&D to identify and collaborate with leading industrial and academic partners in the development of tools and processes for the production and commercialization of cell-based dairy and milk bioactive products. Prior to joining TurtleTree, Shou worked as Global Head of Innovation Scouting at Merck KGaA’s Silicon Valley Innovation Hub in Menlo Park, California where he was an integral part of Merck KGaA’s newly established Cultivated Meat Innovation program by identifying and collaborating with key cultivated meat startups and leading academic labs to work on culture media, scaffolds, bioreactors and cell line areas. Shou received his PhD in Molecular Genetics and did a post-doctoral training in Molecular Neurobiology at Washington University Medical School in St. Louis. Shou also did a 2-year sabbatical in Synthetic Biology at the Church lab at Harvard Medical School before he joined Life Technologies (acquired by Thermo Fisher) as Director of Synthetic Biology Business Development.