Symbio Bioculinary is honored to announce that Dr. Johnny Drain, a scientist, chef, author, and one of the world’s foremost voices in fermentation, has joined our advisory board.
Dr. Drain’s path to this moment is not a straight line, and that is precisely what makes him valuable. After completing his doctorate in Materials Science at Oxford, he turned toward the kitchen and the culture vessel rather than the laboratory bench, spending his career exploring how fermentation has shaped the bodies we inhabit, the foods we eat, and the world we live in. He pioneered research into food waste valorization at Doug McMaster’s Silo, the world’s first zero-waste restaurant, and has consulted for Michelin-starred kitchens across the globe seeking to use fermentation as both a creative and a sustainability tool. In 2021, he co-founded Win-Win (WNWN Food Labs), which became the world’s first company to bring a cocoa-free chocolate to market- a proof of concept that fermentation science, rigorously applied, can replace even the most entrenched ingredients in the global food supply.
His 2025 book Adventures in Fermentation (Penguin Life) draws endorsements from René Redzepi, Heston Blumenthal, Sandor Katz, Fergus Henderson, and Michel Roux Jr. — a who’s-who of the food world that reflects the rare territory Dr. Drain occupies: equally credible in a research paper and at a restaurant pass.
What draws someone of Dr. Drain’s standing to an early-stage startup? He is direct about it.
“When Elliott approached me I was quickly won over by his sharpness, ideas, and drive,” said Dr. Drain. “I joined to help sharpen the science, challenge assumptions, and make sure the biology scales in the messy reality of industry.”
That phrase – the messy reality of industry – is the core of what Dr. Drain brings to Symbio. His is not the perspective of someone who has worked only in controlled environments. He has watched fermentation science fail at scale, and he has developed an intuition for where and why it breaks down — in organism behavior under industrial stress, in the gap between bench results and real-world performance, in the compounding demands of commercial deployment. His role at Symbio will not be ceremonial. He joined specifically to push back, stress-test assumptions, and apply the hard-edged practical rigor that separates durable fermentation companies from ones that scale beautifully in the lab and fracture on the factory floor.
“Dr. Drain brings incredible experience to our board and invaluable perspective on scaling novel innovations,” said Elliott Notrica, Founder and CEO of Symbio Bioculinary. “He has done what we are trying to do in translating fermentation science into real-world products, and has an intimate understanding of the ecosystem.”
With this appointment, Symbio continues to build an advisory board defined by people who have operated at the frontier of fermentation science and lived through the gap between promising science and commercial reality. Dr. Drain’s appointment signals the direction the company is headed: serious science, serious scale, and a commitment to building something that works not just in the lab, but in the world.