Melanie Brown founded Biophase in 1995 as a vehicle for providing consultancy services in the environmental and energy sectors, combining technical and business expertise.
Melanie is an experienced environmental technologist with strong presentational and business development skills, and a track record of helping early-stage businesses into the market place. She has a PhD in biological waste water treatment and more than 20 years experience of developing and commercialising new biotechnologies in the environmental and energy sectors. She has more than 100 publications in journals, trade magazines, conference proceedings, books and patents in the fields of microbial oil recovery, waste treatment and environmental technology.
Biophase provides technical and business advice on environmental technology, waste treatment, energy from waste, biofuels and sustainable development. Assistance with business development, business research, business planning, project management, technical writing, technology transfer, intellectual property and publicity is also offered. Major projects have included:
- an assessment of sustainable food production and the implications for the chemical sciences for the Royal Society of Chemistry (2008) leading to the publication by RSC and IChemE jointly of the report 'The Vital Ingredient' in January 2009
- identification of licensing partners for an agricultural research organisation in New Zealand (2008)
- an evaluation of the potential for establishing a business to produce bioethanol for fuel from food processing co-products for an animal feed supplier
- publicity programme for an environmental software company
- expert evaluator for the European Commission since 1994 on a variety of programmes including Infrastructures, SME programmes and Fork to Farm
- market surveys on biofilters and dissolved air flotation
- environmental survey for a new port development in Aden, Yemen
- writing regular technical articles for Environment Business Magazine 1997-2003