About Joe..

Originally from Perth, Western Australia, I trained as an organic chemist specializing in carbohydrates under the supervision of Dr Bob Stick who emphasized the importance of good bench skills and technique for success as a chemist.

I took that lesson with me as a postdoc in Edmonton, Canada then, by virtue of a very cool boss in Dr Ole Hindsgaul, the chance to live and work in San Diego, California. It was at the Burnham Institute that I learnt to work as a chemist in a ‘sea of biologists’ and the importance of understanding the biological questions behind the requests for complex carbohydrates that would take months to synthesize.

After a short stint as a medicinal chemist at a small company in Carlsbad, CA I moved to the San Francisco Bay Area with girlfriend Joan (we married in 2001) and embarked on what became an amazing 26 year long journey when I joined Genencor, an industrial biotechnology company based in Palo Alto, California, in March 2000. Genencor was subsequently purchased by Dansico (2005), DuPont (2011) and then IFF (2021). For most of that time I worked on small molecule projects needing a chemists skills and led the analytical group for 18 of the 26 years tasked with providing support to R&D projects of all stages of development. I left IFF in February 2026 and founded McAuliffe Consulting Services LLC soon thereafter.

I have focused my career on unlocking the promise of industrial biotechnology, which overlaps with ‘synthetic biology’, yet feel that the golden age of applied biology is really just beginning. I currently provide both strategic and technical expertise to investors, companies and organizations working in the Industrial Biotechnology and Synthetic Biology space. My goal is to work with clients to help solve problems, enable growth, drive value creation and help expand our industry.