Dr. Daniel Westcott
Daniel Westcott, PhD is a plant biologist and protein scientist whose work focuses on building rigorous experimental and data foundations for sustainable food formulations. He is a Senior Scientist at the Sustainable Protein Action Lab, where he leads research on plant-derived protein functionality, and a Co-Founder of Matched Materials AI, a venture focused on accelerating the transition to biodegradable materials.
Daniel earned his PhD in Plant Biology from the University of California, Berkeley, where, as a National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellow, he investigated metabolic flexibility and lipid accumulation in microalgae. This work examined how photosynthetic organisms route carbon and energy into different metabolic endpoints, providing a mechanistic lens on how biological systems store energy in proteins, lipids, and other biomolecules. Before his doctoral work, he completed a degree in education with a focus in biology, while also conducting undergraduate research on plant immunity.
After his PhD, Daniel spent nearly four years at Climax Foods, a data-driven plant-based foods company, where he worked at the interface of protein science and data science for food formulations. He designed and analyzed screening workflows to connect protein properties—such as solubility, gelation, melt, stretch, and texture—to formulation choices and process conditions. His work supported the development of next-generation plant-based cheeses and other dairy alternatives by grounding product decisions in data.
At the Action Lab, Daniel builds on this experience by developing holistic assays to map how plant proteins behave across pH, salt, temperature, and shear conditions. His research focuses on functional metrics across proteins from diverse crops and processing routes. A key part of his role is turning these experiments into clean, interoperable datasets with well-defined metadata, controls, and quality checks, making them suitable for both expert interpretation and machine learning models. By treating proteins as tunable materials rather than fixed commodities, his work enables more predictive approaches to plant-based product development.
Daniel’s scientific perspective is informed by a long-standing, hands-on relationship with the food system. He’s worked in the dish pit and the grocery, and later on a community-supported agriculture (CSA) farm working in the vegetable garden. These experiences gave him a practical understanding of how food is grown, distributed, and consumed, and these experiences anchor his research questions in real-world constraints across the food system.
Sustainability and ethics are consistent threads through Daniel’s work. He has spent decades thinking about how dietary choices intersect with animal welfare, climate, nutrient cycles, and ecosystem health. In the lab, this translates into attention to how crop choice, processing intensity, and formulation strategies fit into the broader context.
Outside of work, Daniel enjoys music, skateboarding, hiking, and spending time in nature with his family and animals. These interests reflect the same core motivation that runs through his scientific career: building food systems that are not only technically and economically robust, but also compatible with the long-term health of the environments and organisms they depend on.