LSC is proud to honor Uma Valeti as one of this year’s three recipients of the Genius Awards, which will be presented at the 30th Anniversary Genius Gala on May 22, 2023! Valeti is a cultivated meat pioneer and founder of UPSIDE Foods, the world's first cultivated meat company.

Dr. Uma Valeti was a cardiologist at the renowned Mayo Clinic when he saw firsthand the therapeutic power and promise of stem-cell technology to grow human heart cells in a lab. He decided that he might do more good in the world if he could successfully harness stem-cell technology to grow meat. “If I continued as a cardiologist," Dr. Valeti said, "maybe I would save 2,000 or 3,000 lives over the next 30 years. But if I could find a new way to bring meat to the table, I’d have the potential to save billions of human lives and trillions of animal lives.”

In 2015, Dr. Valeti co-founded Memphis Meats (now called UPSIDE Foods), the world’s first cultivated meat company. In 2016, he and the company created the first cultivated meatball, and in 2017, cultivated duck and chicken, which offered a taste of the coming cultivated meat revolution. More than 100 startups today are working on no-kill meat; UPSIDE Foods was the first company whose cultivated meat received the FDA’s blessing as safe to eat.

Clean [or cultivated] meat, for which no animals are caged or slaughtered, has other potential advantages. Cultivated meat could be abundant and reduce worldwide protein shortages. It can be produced in a greener way than traditional big agriculture, which emits vast quantities of carbon and destroys forests and biodiversity. And it will not contribute to zoonotic diseases that people get from living in close proximity to livestock.

Click here to learn more about this year’s Genius Gala.

Genius Gala,  Uma Valeti,  UPSIDE Foods