Romel Menacho

CSO, Roke Biotechnologies

Dr. Romel Menacho-Melgar earned his Ph.D. in Biomedical Engineering from Duke University under the mentorship of Dr. Michael D. Lynch. He is the Co-Founder and Chief Scientific Officer of Roke Biotechnologies, a Duke spinout focused on low-cost, scalable protein manufacturing. At Roke, he leads R&D, manufacturing, and commercialization efforts, and has secured over $1M in non-dilutive funding. His work focuses on developing standardized, growth-decoupled protein expression systems and engineering E. coli strains with enhanced expression and built-in downstream simplification.