Oleg Gutsol — HTBAA Fall 2026
About me
I’m Oleg Gutsol, founder of Elemin. I am building Elemin around MAIA (Microbial AI for Agriculture), an genomic AI system for discovering beneficial microorganisms, and Athanor, an automated manufacturing system for producing them.
Through How To Biomanufacture Almost Anything, I want to connect microbial discovery with practical experience in cultivation, measurement, and automation.
From microbial discovery to automated production
My proposed project is to manufacture small research batches of a living microbial crop-protection inoculant and build a workflow that records production and measures viable output and retained biological activity.
Can we manufacture a beneficial microorganism reproducibly while preserving the biological function that made it worth selecting?
I plan to establish the workflow with a characterized reference strain, then use it to evaluate additional organisms and eventually an accessible MAIA-selected candidate.
Coursework and project
- Week 1: Final Project Ideas — the product, living system, automation workflow, scale estimates, and technical unknowns.
- Final Project — the proposed direction and intended deliverables.