Maria Paz Merino
Executive Director
CBT SOFOFA Hub
Santiago, Chile
PhD in Engineering Sciences, spec. Chemical Engineering & Biotechnology. I lead CBT SOFOFA Hub, Chile's national translational biotech center. We bridge industry demand and biotech solutions across mining, agri-food, aquaculture & forestry.
My organisation
About me
I am the Executive Director of the Centro de Biotecnología Traslacional (CBT) at SOFOFA Hub, Chile's leading industry-driven translational biotechnology center. I hold a PhD in Engineering Sciences with specialization in Chemical Engineering and Biotechnology from the Department of Chemical Engineering, Biotechnology and Materials (DIQBM) at the Faculty of Physical and Mathematical Sciences (FCFM), Universidad de Chile. My work focuses on accelerating biotech adoption across Chile's key productive sectors — mining, aquaculture, forestry, agri-food, and biomedicine — by building bridges between scientific capacity and industrial demand. Under my leadership, CBT has developed a national network spanning 9 universities and 6 international centers of excellence, and launched Hemisferio Biotech, a scale-up program supporting early-stage biotech companies in reaching their first industrial clients and international markets. I am a strong advocate for modernizing Chile's regulatory framework and fostering public-private collaboration to position the country as a global biotech reference, leveraging world-class scientific output and competitive production costs. I join the GIS to explore partnerships that can connect Chile's biotech ecosystem with international innovation networks and investors.