We are also honored to have had CAS be among the first to share the concept of cellular agriculture with and beyond the Harvard community through our guest lectures, publications, and partnerships such as with the Harvard Innovation Lab. These relationships are similarly extensive and varied, ranging from collaborations with Harvard’s Library System to the schools of Business, Law, and Engineering. Below you can find more information on all of these efforts, as well as the people from Harvard who have worked with CAS to trailblaze cellular agriculture across all corners of the globe.

After a few years of fruitful collaboration, our university affiliation and geographical proximity began distancing from Harvard. Our relationship subsequently concluded with Harvard Law School’s TLC in 2019. We remain grateful to Joe and his team at TLC for the mentorship and pro bono legal backing that CAS benefited from throughout the duration of our relationship.

These early publications, as well as burgeoning relationships that CAS was building around the university, would bring cellular agriculture into a new spotlight at Harvard and beyond. Building up to the launch of CAS in 2018, an amazing team began to form around CAS, including many Harvard staff, students, and faculty. Of which, there was growing support from notable members of Harvard administration, student organizations, and professors to help share cellular agriculture with the broader community outside of Harvard.

This led to Kristopher and the first CAS Fellows to be invited to deliver the first talks on cellular agriculture at the university, as well as receive invitations to speak at nearby institutions like MIT. Outside of Boston and the US, this original CAS group gave talks on cellular agriculture abroad at places like NEMO Amsterdam, City University of London, and San Francisco’s Alternative Protein Show.

On March 9th, 2018, in a small, Harvard computer lab on Church Street in Cambridge, Massachusetts, CAS was born; we launched with the release of our original website. This day would later become an annual milestone marker for the most important projects at CAS (internally referred to as, “CAS Day”), including 90 Reasons launching March 9th 2019, and the release of our award-winning website on March 9th, 2020. But the original, March 9th, 2018 marked the beginning of all that would become CAS for years to come.

In June of 2018, we received the humbling notice that CAS was accepted as a VIP venture at Harvard Business School’s Harvard Innovation Lab; this would grant us access to the iLab’s valuable resources and connections.

But after a couple of years building and launching our nonprofit at Harvard, the utility of remaining at the university was limited. It was becoming obvious that it was time for CAS to move on and begin the process of leaving the many roots we had built in Cambridge. One of many reasons for this impetus was that CAS Founder, Kristopher Gasteratos, was increasingly devoting more time to CAS than to his academic responsibilities. And while he notes his enrollment as a student and researcher at Harvard as being invaluable, he ultimately spent more time devoted to cellular agriculture than to his schoolwork; this led to his dropping out to work at CAS full-time in 2018.

This academic conclusion, among other factors, including fundraising success after our launch, allowed us to look towards the future. We felt a completely new environment would be productive in the critical, early years that CAS was experiencing; it would help us further define our vision for our organization and facilitate our strategic future for what we could contribute to cellular agriculture. Meanwhile, the CAS team, consisting of a growing number of Harvard-based Fellows, Advisors, and Alumni, continued to give presentations regularly on campus and generally, went on to advance cellular agriculture across the university and abroad.

A few notable examples of CAS work during this time include the start of the CAS Textbook, which began in the Summer of 2018 through our collaboration with Cambridge-based publisher, Elsevier, multiple guest lectures facilitated by new CAS Advisors, and an effort by a group of CAS Fellows to develop a comprehensive cellular agriculture course at Harvard, which made substantial progress and laid a foundation for future endeavors.

Towards the end of 2018, as the year and our time at Harvard was coming to a close, we felt a special effort should coincide with our fast-approaching departure. This was especially noteworthy considering how CAS leaving Harvard was aligning, chronologically, with the anniversary of our initial CAS Launch (March 9th). Coincidentally enough, the preparation of a long-standing project was also coming to a close; it was a piece of literature, years in the making, that would become one of the top, awareness-building projects to come out of CAS.

Over the subsequent months, we worked with dozens of stakeholders in the cellular agriculture field and our Harvard colleagues to develop the work that would become 90 Reasons to Consider Cellular Agriculture. This once again offered a collaboration opportunity with our friends at Harvard Library's Office for Scholarly Communication & Digital Access to Scholarship. 90 Reasons was released on March 9th, 2019, representing a landmark project for the CellAg field with over 40 stakeholders working together to create a comprehensive list of cellular agriculture’s potential benefits. It would later become a university-wide trending literature and receive critical acclaim inside the cellular agriculture world and well beyond.

The release of 90 Reasons marked the inflection point for CAS moving. It signified an important milestone for our relationship with Harvard; one where we originally had the privilege of sharing the concept of cellular agriculture with just hundreds of students on campus, then with the launch of CAS, we were able to share CellAg with thousands around the world through our website and conferences, and lastly, through the publication of 90 Reasons, our reach for cellular agriculture had expanded to tens of thousands of readers.

You can directly access 90 Reasons here, made publicly available by Harvard DASH, or read our article to explore the project’s history, development, and achievements.

So much of our organizational development took place at this special institution in Cambridge, Massachusetts; we feel incredibly grateful to have met so many people in the region that would help us build CAS during our earliest years. Our relationship with Harvard continues through our support of Harvard-based CAS Fellows, ongoing work with Harvard-based CAS Advisors, and textbook authors, regular visits to give guest lectures on campus, and our role serving as an Alumnus of the Harvard Innovation Lab. We are also grateful for the continued awareness-building of cellular agriculture that is graciously facilitated through Harvard’s DASH system, which continues to extend our various works on cellular agriculture to so many across the world, offering readership for free, 24/7/365.

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  Professor, Medical School & Wyss Institute

  Dr. George Church

  George Church is a member of the CAS Advisory Board. He is an American geneticist, molecular engineer, and chemist, widely recognized for his innovative contributions to genomic science and his many pioneering contributions to chemistry and biomedicine. In 1984, he developed the first direct genomic sequencing method, which resulted in the first genome sequence. He helped initiate the Human Genome Project in 1984 and the Personal Genome Project in 2005.
  
  Church is the Robert Winthrop Professor of Genetics at Harvard Medical School, Professor of Health Sciences and Technology at Harvard and MIT, and a founding member of the Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering. He is Director of the U.S. Department of Energy Technology Center and Director of the National Institutes of Health Center of Excellence in Genomic Science. He has received numerous awards including Time’s “100 Most Influential People in the World Today”, the 2011 Bower Award, Prize for Achievement in Science from the Franklin Institute, as well as election to the National Academy of Sciences and Engineering.

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  Professor, Department of Psychology

  Dr. Steven Pinker

  Steven Pinker is a member of the CAS Advisory Board. He is a Canadian-American cognitive psychologist, linguist, and popular science author. He has won numerous prizes for his research, his teaching, and his nine books, including The Language Instinct, How the Mind Works, The Blank Slate, The Better Angels of Our Nature, and The Sense of Style.
  
  Pinker is a Johnstone Family Professor in the Department of Psychology at Harvard University. He is an advocate of evolutionary psychology and the computational theory of mind, and his academic specializations are visual cognition and psycholinguistics. He is an elected member of the National Academy of Sciences, a two-time Pulitzer Prize finalist, a Humanist of the Year, a recipient of nine honorary doctorates, and one of Foreign Policy’s “World’s Top 100 Public Intellectuals” and Time’s “100 Most Influential People in the World Today.”

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  Professor, Department of Philosophy

  Dr. Christine Korsgaard

  Christine Korsgaard is a member of the CAS Advisory Board. She is an American philosopher who has held positions at Yale, the University of California at Santa Barbara, and the University of Chicago, as well as visiting positions at Berkeley and UCLA. Korsgaard has also served as President of the Eastern Division of the American Philosophical Association and held a Mellon Distinguished Achievement Award from 2006-2009.
  
  Korsgaard is an Arthur Kingsley Porter Professor of Philosophy at Harvard University. Her research is in moral philosophy and its history, practical reason, the nature of agency, personal identity, normativity, and the ethical relations between human beings and the other animals.

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  Lecturer, Department of Sociology

  Dr. Shai Dromi

  Shai Dromi is a member of the CAS Advisory Board. He is an Israeli comparative-historical sociologist and Associate Editor of the American Journal of Cultural Sociology. Dromi also holds memberships at the American Sociological Association, the Eastern Sociological Society, the Social Science History Association, and the Society for the Study of Social Problems. His book, “Above the Fray”, received the Marvin B. Sussman Prize from Yale University and an honorable mention for the Theda Skocpol Best Dissertation Award from the American Sociological Association.
  
  Dromi is a lecturer of Sociology at Harvard University. He teaches courses in areas of organizations, global and transnational sociology, cultural sociology, and sociological theory. His work has appeared in journals such as Rural Sociology, Sociological Theory & Society, and Altruism, Morality, and Social Solidarity, receiving the Outstanding Published Article Award.

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  Lecturer, Center for the Environment

  Dr. Laurence Simon

  Laurence Simon is a member of the CAS Advisory Board. He is an American environmentalist and global health expert. Simon has served as a senior advisor to the Google Foundation and the World Bank, the Associate Dean at the Heller School for Social Policy and Management, program director for Oxfam America, leading the launch of its first work in Central America and the Caribbean, and was recently appointed by the Prime Minister of Sri Lanka to design a new premier university. Simon also founded the American Jewish World Service in the 1980’s and directed the establishment of UN World Food Programme operations.
  
  Simon is a Professor of International Development and Director of the Center for Global Development and Sustainability at Brandeis University, and teaches at Harvard University during Summer Semesters. His research focuses on the social determinants of health and well-being, psychological and cultural barriers to poverty reduction, caste and social exclusion studies, agrarian reform, post-harvest technology transfer, social exclusion and emancipatory development, and higher education curriculum design and governance.

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  Alumnus Professor, Harvard Medical School

  Dr. Nir Eyal

  Nir Eyal is a member of the CAS Advisory Board. He is an Israeli public health expert and bioethicist who moved from Harvard to Rutgers in 2019 to become the inaugural Henry Rutgers Professor of Bioethics, with appointments at the School of Public Health and Philosophy. He currently serves as the Director of the Rutgers Center for Population-Level Bioethics.
  
  Prior to moving to Rutgers in 2019, Nir served as an Associate Professor of Global Health and Social Medicine at Harvard Medical School. He was additionally appointed to the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health Department of Global Health and Population and the Harvard Program in Ethics and Health. He also previously served as a Faculty Fellow at the Edmond J. Safra Center for Ethics, Harvard University. Prior to joining Harvard, Nir was the Harold T. Shapiro Postdoctoral Fellow in Bioethics at the Center for Human Values of Princeton University and previously, Postdoctoral Fellow at the Department of Clinical Bioethics of the National Institutes of Health. He holds a DPhil in Politics from Oxford University and an MA in Philosophy from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.

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  Film Director, Harvard University

  Michael Van Devere

  Michael Van Devere is a member of the CAS Advisory Board. He is an American, Harvard-based film director, producer, author, painter, and founder of independent film company, Fabular Films. He started his studies of the fine arts at Houston’s acclaimed High School of the Performing and Visual Arts. He would later study filmmaking at New York's School of Visual Arts, and English Literature at Harvard University. His specialties include producing, directing, screenwriting, film & digital editing, costume & set design, and graphic design.
  
  Michael has produced several short and feature-length films through Fabular Films including John Harvard, American Sleeper, Between Two Friends, and PERKINS 28. He is the author of works such as The Wheels and Saal, and his short stories have appeared in Harrington Gay Men’s Fiction Quarterly and Fresh Men 2: New Voices in Gay Fiction.

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  Research Fellow, Faculty of Arts & Sciences

  Shuo Li Liu

  Shuo Li Liu is a former CAS Fellow and member of the CAS Advisory Board. He is a Chinese economist and Mathematician, responsible for spearheading various initiatives at CAS. These include, but are not limited to, starting multiple CellAg student organizations around the world, authoring various textbook chapters and publications, including a report published in Science Magazine, helping to establish CAS partnership strategy, including acceptance of CAS as a VIP Venture in Harvard Business School’s iLab, delivering a number of guest lectures, and has built key institutional and government partnerships for CAS including with the UN.
  
  Liu is a research fellow at the Faculty of Arts & Sciences at Harvard University. He is also pursuing his PhD in Computational Mathematics at Stanford.

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  MA, Extension School Management

  Haroon Chaudhary

  Haroon Chaudhary is a member of the CAS Advisory Board. He is a Pakistani serial entrepreneur and businessman; founder of the web development company, Creanyx, where he has served as Director and COO. Haroon has also launched and executively led multiple other ventures, including his work as Director of Marketing & Sales at Medheave Healthcare Services. He was instrumental to the development of the original CAS Website and continues to provide support through his role as an advisor.
  
  Haroon received his BS in Computer Science at the National University of Computer and Emerging Sciences, based in Islamabad, Pakistan. He then went on to pursue his Master’s in Management at Harvard, receiving his Master of Liberal Arts in 2018.

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  MBA, Harvard Business School

  Taro Tan

  Taro Tan is a former CAS Fellow and legal associate, originally from Singapore. Prior to pursuing his law degree at Harvard, he received his BA in Law from Cambridge University, where he served as the President of the Cambridge University Law and Business Association, as well as the President of the Sir David Williams Society.
  
  Taro graduated with his LLM from Harvard Law School in 2018. He is also an editor of the Harvard Kennedy School Student Publication, the Singapore Policy Journal.

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  BS, Statistics & Energy and Environment

  Miela Foster

  Miela Foster is a former CAS Fellow and statistician, currently working as an Engineering Project Manager at Apple. She is originally from Ann Arbor, Michigan and is the founder of Oak Systems, also serving as COO.
  
  Miela graduated from Harvard in 2021 with her Bachelor’s degree in Statistics; Secondary, in Energy and Environment. During her time at Harvard, she was actively engaged at the university, holding positions with the Harvard Project for Asian and International Relations, Association of Black Harvard Women Alums, Harvard Student Agencies, the Harvard Kennedy School, as well as serving as an undergraduate research fellow with Professor John H Shaw’s group.

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  AB, Philosophy and Computer Science

  Matthew Mandel

  Matthew Mandel is a former CAS Fellow and agriculture specialist, who has held positions such as Operations Executive Analyst and Farm Development Associate at AeroFarms. He is a previous Lester Kissel Grant award recipient for his studies of philosophy at the Edmond J. Safra Center for Ethics, Harvard University.
  
  Matthew graduated Magna Cum Laude from Harvard in 2019 with his Bachelor’s in Philosophy; Secondary in Computer Science. His senior thesis on Kant’s ethical theory, entitled “The Normative Question: A Constitutive Account of What We Should Do and Why”, won the Carrier Prize in 2019. Matthew was also a member of Harvard’s Phi Beta Kappa Society.

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  Bachelor’s, Political Science and Government

  Felipe Espitia

  Felipe Espitia is a CAS Fellow and economist, currently working at the hedge fund, Citadel, on Wall Street. He is originally from Colombia and has held positions at Goldman Sachs, Harvard’s Kennedy School, and the Phillips Brooks House.
  
  Felipe graduated Cum Laude from Harvard in 2019 with his Bachelor’s degree in Political Science and Government; Secondary, in Anthropology and Archaeology. During his time at Harvard, he was actively engaged at the university, holding positions with Harvard Mentors for Urban Debate, Harvard Square Homeless Shelter, Harvard Democrats Policy and Publicity Committee, Colombian Student Association, and the Harvard Africa Business and Investment Club.

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  Former Student, Faculty of Arts & Sciences

  Kristopher Gasteratos

  Kristopher Gasteratos is the Founder, President, and Creative Director at CAS. During his time as a student at Harvard, he published multiple works for cellular agriculture, including 90 Reasons to Consider Cellular Agriculture, as well as works in peer-reviewed journals such as Science and Meat Science. The launch of CAS itself took place at Harvard in 2018, as well as the development of a number of critical CAS relationships, including many Harvard-based CAS Fellows and Advisors. Although Kristopher notes his enrollment as a student and researcher at Harvard was important, he ultimately spent more time devoted to cellular agriculture and CAS than to his school work; this led to his dropping out to work at CAS full-time later in 2018.
  
  To learn more about the story of CAS and Kristopher, please read Our Story.

Throughout this section, you can find many notable Harvard-based CAS Advisors and Fellows, but we wanted to take this opportunity to also thank a few other special members of the Harvard community who have helped make a difference in CAS over the years. Such a list would be too long if it were to be exhaustive, but some of those individuals include: Joe Hedal (Harvard Law School | TLC), Emily Wu (HKS | CAS Textbook Author), Luke MacQueen (SEAS | CAS Textbook Author), Dr. Kit Parker (SEAS | CAS Textbook Author), Christophe Chantre (SEAS | CAS Textbook Author), Grant Gonzalez (SEAS | CAS Textbook Author), Michael Rosnach (SEAS | CAS Textbook Author), John Zimmerman (SEAS | CAS Textbook Author), Bob (Harvard Bus System), Jack (Harvard Bus System), Rick (Cronkhite Cafe), Ashley Davis (MA | Author), and many more.