Dr. Assem is a synthetic organic chemist with a passion for turning science into impactful products for the environment. Her expertise in peptide and protein synthesis, enzyme engineering, and material science has enabled her to manage the entire product lifecycle from ideation to commercial launch.

One of her significant accomplishments was overseeing the development and scale-up to manufacturing of MYLOTM. Naila managed the handbag, footwear, and accessory product lines, from ideation to launch, resulting in the successful commercial launch of MYLOTM handbag material with Stella McCartney and Lululemon, featured in the New York Times and Paris Fashion Week. Naila has also led a discovery team of four at Novozymes, where she built out a new directed evolution platform capable of screening 200M enzyme variants simultaneously, addressing an 'off patent' issue.

Her diverse skill set includes experience with bio-conjugation, small molecule substrate synthesis, peptide and protein synthesis, PCR/qPCR, molecular biology techniques, and textile development. Naila has supported the build-out of data capture and visualization tools to increase research productivity and ease communication across different departments and is an avid agile scrum-style project manager.

Naila holds a Ph.D. in organic chemistry from the University of Toronto as well as a B.Sc. in medicinal chemistry from the University of Ottawa. Additionally, she was a NIH Postdoctoral fellow at the Scripps Research Institute, department of Chemical Biology.