Who We Are
Our Vision is a fermentation-driven sustainable future
Mission
Make fermentation processes accessible, cost-effective and user-friendly for every value-adding concept, whether it is within a startup, an established company, or a research endeavor.
Story
Launched in April 2022, YDLabs is the FIRST fermentation pilot facility dedicated to Foodtech and Agritech sectors in Israel. We are fermentation enthusiasts, specializing in process development and optimization from an idea level to 1,000L scale-up. Our technical team has over 70 years of accumulated fermentation experience, specifically in the Foodtech sector, which allows us to handle the trickiest projects in a broad range of methods to the best outcome.
This focus is what makes us so good at what we do and allows us to provide both a comprehensive range of services as well as the highest quality.
October 2022
Opening doors
February 2023
Launching 80L fermentor
June 2023
IIA Grant & Gadot investment
February 2024
Pilot plant opening: 300L & 1000L
April 2025
Expanding to production scale-15000L
October 2022
Opening Doors
February 2023
Launching 80L fermentor
June 2023
IIA Grant & Gadot Investment
February 2024
Pilot Plant Opening - up to 1000L
April 2025
Expanding to Production Scale - 15000L
The YDLabs team comprises experts in Biology, Biotechnology, Engineering, and more, under the leadership of Ariel Blumovich, a seasoned entrepreneur in the healthcare and Foodtech industries with extensive global experience across three continents.
Ariel Blumovich
Chief Executive Officer
Chief Executive Officer
Ariel Blumovich is a seasoned entrepreneur and executive with over 17 years of healthcare and FoodTech experience in various management positions, in companies such as Samsung, Teva, Sanofi and Enzymotec. Ariel is the founder of YDL Ventures – a biotech advisory firm supporting pharma R&D projects.
Ariel holds a B.Sc. in Mechanical Engineering from the Israeli Technion, and an MBA from Tuck Business School at Dartmouth.
Moti Rebhun, PhD.
Chief Technology Officer
Chief Technology Officer
Moti Rebhun has over 30 years of experience in fermentation process development, scale-up, separation and purification of fermentation-based proteins, enzymes, small molecules and others. Moti presided as Hadassa’s fermentation Unit Head, and the CTO of various companies such as Fermentek and Bio-Dalia. Moti is the founder of Israel’s Fermentation Society.
Moti is an Agricultural Faculty graduate, and owns a Master’s degree from Tel Aviv University and a PhD from the Hebrew University and Haifa University.
Yoni Manor, PhD.
Chief Operations Officer
Chief Operations Officer
Yoni Manor has over 15 years of experience in the food & pharma sectors, of which 10 years at Enzymotec. During his tenure, Yoni held the COO position at Enzymotec’s US-based medical- food company and later served as Enzymotec’s Plant Manager.
In recent years, Yoni has initiated and managed several young start-ups in the medical field.
Yoni holds a B.Sc. in Material Engineering and a PhD in Physical Chemistry from the Israeli Technion.
Liraz Brown
VP Finane
VP Finane
Liraz is highly experienced in financial management and project control, particularly in the technology and manufacturing industries. Her roles as PMO and Site Finance Controller involved managing project budgets, interfacing with cross-company teams and international clients, implementing procurement procedures, and overseeing financial reporting, budget planning, and SOX compliance.
Liraz holds a Bachelor’s degree in Economics and Accounting from the Ruppin Academic Center and is a certified public accountant in Israel.
Hila Hadad
Chief Clients Officer
Chief Clients Officer
Hila Hadad is highly experienced in operations and purchasing processes in the healthcare industry. Hila’s professional experience includes managing projects in the engineering, chemical and tourism industries, as well as entrepreneurship projects in the wellness industry.
Hila holds a B.Sc. in Industrial Engineering from the Israeli Technion.
Roee Vidavski, PhD.
Chief Commercial Officer
Chief Commercial Officer
Roee Vidavski brings extensive experience in both commercial and various life science fields. As part of his role at YDLabs, Roee leads all commercial activities, encompassing business development, marketing and sales. Before joining YDLabs, Roee held multiple management positions in the biotech service industry for over 10 years. In this capacity, he supported numerous projects at different stages of drug development, including early discovery, pre-clinical development, drug product manufacturing, and long-term strategic roadmaps.
After completing his PhD, Roee worked as a postdoctoral researcher at Tel-Aviv University, exposed to molecular biology, genomics, biochemistry and synthetic biology. Roee holds a PhD in Microbiology and Biochemistry from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.
Michael Spevak
Head of Downstream, MSc.
Head of Downstream, MSc.
Michael Spevak is an experienced manufacturing engineer, with a proven history of working in the veterinary and biopharmaceutical industry.
Skilled in Pharmaceutics, Vaccines, Biotechnology, Cell Culture as well as Research and Development. He is a strong operation professional holding a Master of Science, Biotechnology major from the Moscow Institute of Chemical Technology.
May Avital
Business Development Manager, Msc.
Business Development Manager, Msc.
May is an environmental activist with specialization in food security. She is the founder of the Fridge community in Beer Sheva, which aims to reduce food waste, while strengthening the community, and of the FoodTech community at Ben Gurion University (BGU), dedicated to promoting alternative proteins and a sustainable food system.
She holds a B.Sc. and an M.Sc. in Environmental Biotechnology Engineering, with a focus on plastic biodegradation, in the honors program at BGU.
Riziq Abu Sini
Project Engineering Manager
Project Engineering Manager
Riziq Abu Sini is an experienced bio-process engineer in the fermentation industry. He is an expert in leading, defining and driving end-to-end biotechnological R&D processes including USP & DSP, as well as building and implementing procedures with analytical methods.
He holds a B.Sc. in Biotechnology Engineering, focused on biotech anatomy from Ort Braude Academic College.
Adv. Ben Shalom
Legal Advisor
Legal Advisor
Advocate Ben Shalom, an attorney at law, is our Legal Advisor.
Mr. Shalom is the founder and managing partner at Shalom & Co. Law Firm, providing legal services and consulting. Adv. Shalom has more than a decade of experience in M&A’s and international commercial agreements, focusing on intellectual property and joint ventures.
YDLabs Advisory Board is versatile and comprised of the best and most experienced people YDLabs had identified as those who can support its operations:
Lord David Triesman
Lord Triesman, previously a Minister at the Department for Innovation, Universities and Skills in the UK government, brings a wealth of commercial experience and a distinguished career in British politics. His roles include Chairman of the Advisory Board at Templewood Merchant Bank, Board Member of Wembley National Stadium, Chairman of the Football Association, and member of an Advisory Board at UBS. Additionally, he serves on the Board of Trustees for Bounce Forward, a UK-based education charity.
In his political tenure, Lord Triesman oversaw the Prime Minister’s political organization from 2001 to 2004 and held positions as Under-Secretary of State in the Foreign & Commonwealth Office, as well as in the Department for Innovation, Universities and Skills. His ministerial and official opposition roles covered Energy, Business, Higher Education, and International Development in Europe.
Lord Triesman’s extensive global network, coupled with his multifaceted commercial and business experience, makes him a valuable asset to YDLabs, providing invaluable insights and guidance.
Sabine Trupp, PhD.
Dr. Trupp is the Head of Fraunhofer High Performance Center Secure Intelligent Systems Munich, Germany, and also a Private lecturer at Faculty of Electrical Engineering at Institute of Physics, University of the German Federal Armed Forces Munich, Germany. Since July 2022, she is the Managing Director of the Fraunhofer Innovation Platform for Sensors at Tel Aviv University. Previously, Dr. Trupp served as Group Manager at Fraunhofer EMFT, Munich, Germany, Research Scientist at Fraunhofer EMFT, Research and Development at TriOS Mess- und Datentechnik, and Research Scientist at the Institute for Physical Chemistry, Friedrich-Schiller University, Jena, Germany.
Dr. Trupp is a renowned author of numerous scientific publications. She holds a PhD from the Institute for Physical Chemistry, Friedrich-Schiller University in Germany, and a Diploma in Chemistry from the Institute of Organic Chemistry and Macromolecular Chemistry, Friedrich-Schiller University, Jena, Germany.
Professor Roee Amit
Roee Amit is an Associate Professor at the Department of Biotechnology and Food Engineering at the Technion – Israel Institute of Technology, heading a lab with a multi-disciplinary team of Biotechnology, Physics, Chemistry, and Biology students and post-docs in the field of Synthetic and Quantitative Biology. Prof. Amit is also a Co-Founder of the synthetic biology start-up Benevira, Inc., which is developing broad-spectrum antivirals (see https://www.benevira.com/).
Prof. Amit was awarded his undergraduate degree in Applied and Engineering Physics from Cornell University in 1994. He carried out his graduate studies on the interactions of proteins and DNA at the single molecule level in the Weizmann Institute of Science under the supervision of Prof. Joel Stavans, completing his Ph.D. in 2004. In 2006, Prof. Amit moved to Caltech, where he specialized in Synthetic Biology working as an NIH Ruth L. Kirschstein fellow, in collaboration with Profs. Scott Fraser, Frances Arnold (Nobel Prize winner in Chemistry 2018), and Rob Phillips. In 2011, Prof. Amit returned to Israel with an Assistant Professor appointment to start Technion’s first Synthetic Biology research lab. His group is focused on constructing “Synthetic Enhancer Circuits” as well as synthetic and genetically encoded “Nano-assembly-lines” for a variety of applications and research objectives. Between 2015-2020, Prof. Amit coordinated the Horizons 2020 FET-Open MRG-Grammar, CARBP, SOLQC, and UNILIB projects. MRG-Grammar was a first of its kind attempt to decipher the regulatory code both at the DNA and RNA level, by constructing regulatory grammar from the bottom-up in several cell type and in vitro simultaneously. The CARBP, SOLQC and UNILIB projects were focused on converting these scientific findings to technological innovations. Specifically, the work on CARBP resulted in the antiviral slncRNA-granule technology, which led to the foundation of Benevira.
Tammy Meiron, PhD.
Tammy is the Chief Technologist Officer of Fresh Start Foodtech Incubator, and has more than 25 years of experience in R&D, production and technology transfer fields in the life-science, pharmaceuticals and food industries. In her last position, she led the technology in two leading Israeli FoodTech start-ups, developing plant-based egg substitutes for all egg applications as CTO of Zero Egg; and developing sweet proteins as a non-GMO sugar substitute as Amai Proteins’ Director of Food Technology.
Previously, Tammy was involved in numerous startups in the fields of R&D, IP, tech transfer, production Scale-UP, operations, joint ventures with multinational companies, and more. Since 2013, Tammy teaches a new Product Development course at the Hebrew University.
Tammy holds a Ph.D. degree from the Hebrew University in Food Science and Technology.
Guy Harari
Guy is a former executive at Adisseo, one of the world’s largest feed additives companies, and has 40 years of experience in Chemicals, Fiber & Polymers and Animal Nutrition. Guy was previously the Global Head of M&A and Open Innovation for Adsisseo Global, and also President and General Manager of Adisseo US, Canada, Mexico and CA&C.
Guy has extensive experience in running a sales and marketing organization, launching new products, creating new markets and large key account management. His diverse leadership achievements bring unique perspective to YDLabs on how to innovate and be successful in the food business world. Born and raised in Brazil, where he started his career, Guy also lived in France for 3 years and has been living in the US for the past 24 years.
Guy holds a B.Sc. in Mechanical Engineering from the University of Sao Paulo, SP, Brazil.
Feel free to reach out for any inquiries about our services. You can trust us that with continuous growth, there is always something new happening at YDLabs.
October 2022
Opening doors