Grant Conaghan

Engineer, Footballer, and Entrepreneur

I'm a process engineer specializing in materials and polymer science, based in Copenhagen. As a Process Engineer II at Again Bio I help turn CO2 into glacial acetic acid through millennia-old bacteria, and I'm building my own green- engineering startup alongside it. My work spans the full arc of design and scale-up, from R&D to commercial facilities, leading teams through commissioning and startup. I helped take a first-of-a-kind CO2-to-acetic-acid plant from ideation to operation, and before that led the scale-up of Tesla's first battery-grade lithium hydroxide process. Turning bold, unproven ideas into things that actually run is where I do my best work.

Polymers are where it started. A visit to Adidas HQ in Herzogenaurach first pulled me toward engineering, and once I took my first materials course at Stevens Institute of Technology I was hooked on polymers, on how they can be designed to fit almost any situation. I redesigned Adidas Ultraboost TPU technology with an additive to accelerate its breakdown at end of life, then took every materials course I could and continued straight into a Master's in Materials Science and Engineering. Along the way I researched PAA-grafted cellulose nanocrystals under Professor Pinar Akcora, co-developed a self-healing piezoelectric laminate published at the 2022 ASME Congress, and started work on a cellulose-acetate cigarette filter I'm now looking to turn into a business.

I believe polymers are the future, and if we're going to keep using them at the scale we do, recyclability is the question our generation has to answer for the next. That's why I've pointed my career toward sustainability, and why my long-term goal is to launch my own line of eco-friendly footwear and leave a mark through engineering design.

Outside the lab, my life is soccer and family. I've played longer than I've known how to write, at the D1 and D3 collegiate levels and semi-professionally with Naesby Boldklub, on trial at clubs like Dundee FC and FC Erzgebirge Aue, and against sides like AC Milan and SPAL at the Torneo di Viareggio. My family is behind everything I do, and my drive comes straight from them. I’m nothing without my friends and family.