Aletta C. Schnitzler

Chief Scientific Officer at TurtleTree Labs

Aletta recently joined TurtleTree as Chief Scientific Officer, leading the R&D teams and spearheading an innovation roadmap to bring nutritious cell-based dairy and meat alternatives to market.  Previous to joining TurtleTree, Aletta co-founded Merck KGaA’s Cultured Meat Innovation program and directed technology development to advance platforms enabling rapid development, validation and manufacture of cell-based meat products.  Focus areas included formulating cost-effective cell culture media, understanding cell line requirements, and envisioning new process templates for biomass generation and structured products.  Additionally, Aletta was Head of Cell Therapy Bioprocess R&D at MilliporeSigma, honing expertise in media optimization and single-use bioreactor systems for use in a complex regulatory environment.  She also held technical and marketing roles supporting small-scale chromatography devices and cell culture products for monoclonal antibody production.  Aletta received her PhD in 2007 from Boston University School of Medicine in the fields of immunology and neuroscience, and is an editorial board member of Stem Cells Translational Medicine.