Dr. Stefan Kraan is a Co-Founder & serves as Chief Scientific Officer at The Seaweed Company. Dr. Stefan Kraan co-founded & served as Scientific Director at at Ocean Harvest Technology. He is an Angel Investor. Dr. Stefan Kraan is an expert in aquaculture of seaweeds, sustainable development of algal resources, industrial applications of seaweeds and usage of seaweeds in animal feed, aquaculture, biotechnology and biomedicine. He was recently elected vice-president of the International Seaweed Association. Born in The Netherlands, he graduated with a M.Sc. degree in Marine Biology at National University of Groningen, The Netherlands and holds a PhD in phylogenetics and aquaculture of edible seaweeds from the National University of Ireland, Galway. He became manager of the Irish Seaweed Industry Organisation in 1998 and established the Irish Seaweed Centre in 2001, a dedicated R&D centre for seaweed-based research and development. His life's work is the development of large-scale seaweed biomass cultivation programs for the bio-ethanol industry and exploring protein extraction for from seaweeds for animal feed industries.