Dr. Keryn D. Johnson

CIRAS Scientist Team Fellow

Biotechnology · Regenerative Science · Deep Technology · Quantum Biology · Interdisciplinary Research

A New Zealand biochemist, scientific innovator and entrepreneur, Dr Johnson combines the discipline of an applied research scientist with a willingness to investigate questions that sit beyond conventional disciplinary boundaries.

His work reflects a central principle of CIRAS:

The future of science will not be built inside silos. It will emerge where fields converge.

Dr Johnson holds a PhD in Biochemistry from Victoria University of Wellington, an MSc in Molecular Biology and a BSc in Biochemistry and Plant & Microbial Sciences from the University of Canterbury. His scientific career has encompassed molecular biology, protein chemistry, enzyme kinetics, analytical science, biomaterials, nanotechnology, regenerative medicine, natural bioactives and emerging quantum-biology research.

But the defining thread throughout that career has been more than discovery.

It has been translation: asking how knowledge can move from an experiment into an assay, a patent, a manufacturing process, a medical technology, a product, an international collaboration, or an entirely new research question.

From Fundamental Biology to Real-World Innovation

Before moving into founder-led deep technology, Dr Johnson spent nearly two decades within New Zealand’s government research system at Industrial Research Limited and Callaghan Innovation.

Across this period, he led or contributed to more than 100 industry-facing R&D projects supporting more than 50 companies, working across meat, dairy, seafood, horticulture, forestry, agriculture, apiculture, health, biomaterials and biotechnology.

This gave him experience across the complete innovation pathway: scientific strategy, experimental design, assay development, validation, pilot processing, intellectual property, technology transfer, manufacturing requirements and commercial implementation.

One significant example was his contribution to the early process development and functional characterisation of an ovine forestomach extracellular-matrix biomaterial platform that progressed into commercial medical-device applications.

His wider translational work has included wound-healing proteins and peptides, Manuka and kanuka honey bioactives, protein purification, protein-lipid interactions, ganglioside sialyltransferase assays and bioprocessing technologies.

These projects illustrate a philosophy that remains central to his work:

Discovery creates possibility.
Translation creates impact.
The future requires both.

Science, Entrepreneurship and Deep Technology

In 2019, Dr Johnson founded Quantum Technologies Limited (QTL), where he serves as Founder, Chief Executive Officer and Chief Scientist.

Through QTL, he leads scientific and commercial strategy across biotechnology, regenerative-health technologies, bee-product protein systems, analytical development and investigational quantum-biology research. His work spans research portfolio selection, experimental design, product and process development, manufacturing strategy, international collaboration and intellectual-property management.

His entrepreneurial work includes advancing a proprietary Manuka-derived biotechnology platform from laboratory and formulation research into physical products, pilot manufacturing, analytical and quality development, and preparation for qualified contract-manufacturing scale-up.

Dr Johnson is also Founder and Research Director / Executive Lead of the Quantum Biology Research Institute, where he develops interdisciplinary research and education at the interface of biology, biochemistry, physics and emerging quantum-biological questions. Importantly, this programme emphasises testable predictions, experimental controls and a transparent distinction between established science and investigational models.

As Co-Founder and Scientific Lead of IMU LLC, he also contributes to investigational sensing and transducer research integrating optical, electromagnetic, thermal and temporal measurement channels.

Beyond the Boundaries of Established Models

At CIRAS, frontier research does not mean abandoning scientific discipline.

It means creating space for questions that established disciplinary structures may not yet be equipped to answer.

Dr Johnson’s more recent theoretical work investigates possible relationships between atomic-scale phenomena, biological organisation, biological timing, energy processes and cosmology. This includes exploratory work involving a Helium Bose–Einstein Condensate (He-BEC) framework, supersymmetry-related models and emerging questions at the interface of physics and living systems.

These ideas should be understood for what they are: investigational frameworks requiring continued mathematical scrutiny, experimental testing, critical dialogue and independent validation.

That distinction matters.

Because frontier science is not strengthened by overstating what is known.

It is strengthened by making the unknown testable.

For CIRAS, the purpose of interdisciplinary research is therefore not to replace scientific rigour.

It is to expand the territory in which rigorous questions can be asked.

From Regenerative Medicine to Regenerative Systems

Regeneration has been a recurring theme throughout Dr Johnson’s scientific career.

His work in extracellular-matrix biomaterials, wound healing, bioactive proteins, natural products and regenerative technologies reflects a broader interest in how living systems repair, organise, adapt and renew themselves.

At CIRAS, that principle extends beyond medicine.

Regeneration can be understood as a property of living systems, involving restoration, resilience, adaptation, signalling, emergence and renewal.

Deeper understanding of these processes may have implications not only for regenerative medicine, but for biotechnology, agriculture, environmental systems, human health, advanced materials and future approaches to resilience.

This is where Dr Johnson’s background becomes especially relevant to CIRAS: he has worked not only on the science of biological systems, but on the challenge of translating that science into technologies capable of operating in the real world.

Intellectual Property as a Bridge to Impact

Dr Johnson’s research career has also generated a substantial intellectual-property portfolio spanning bee-product biotechnology, anti-inflammatory proteins and peptides, angiogenic and wound-healing technologies, extracellular-matrix tissue scaffolds, nanoparticle-conjugate systems and regenerative applications.

His work therefore sits at a valuable intersection:

research → validation → intellectual property → engineering → manufacturing → application.

For CIRAS, this pathway is fundamental.

Transformative ideas become more consequential when they can move beyond theory and enter the environments where they can be tested, challenged, engineered and ultimately deployed.

A Global Scientific Conversation

Science advances when ideas are exposed to scrutiny, disagreement, experimentation and collaboration.

In 2025, Dr Johnson served as Conference Chair and plenary speaker at the 3rd International Summit on Gravitation, Astrophysics and Cosmology (ISGAC2025) in Valencia, Spain. He subsequently joined the Scientific Committee for ISGAC2026 in Frankfurt, Germany.

His international engagement reflects another important dimension of his contribution to CIRAS: building bridges between disciplines, institutions, independent researchers, entrepreneurs and international scientific networks.

CIRAS exists to strengthen exactly these connections.

Between biology and physics.

Between fundamental science and applied technology.

Between research and commercialisation.

Between established knowledge and unanswered questions.

And ultimately, between what science understands today and what humanity may need to understand tomorrow.

Role at CIRAS

As a CIRAS Team Fellow, Dr Johnson contributes to interdisciplinary and frontier research across:

• Biochemistry and molecular biology
• Biotechnology and bioprocessing
• Regenerative medicine and biomaterials
• Protein chemistry and biological systems
• Natural bioactives and bee-product biotechnology
• Quantum biology and biological energy systems
• Advanced sensing and deep technology
• Biological timing and complex living systems
• Exploratory theoretical physics and cosmology
• Research commercialisation and technology transfer
• Intellectual property and innovation strategy
• International scientific collaboration

His role is not confined to a single CIRAS domain.

It is inherently connective.

By bringing together experience in biological science, regenerative technologies, entrepreneurship, intellectual property, deep technology and exploratory physics, Dr Johnson contributes to CIRAS’s ambition to build an international research ecosystem capable of investigating questions that cannot be understood through one discipline alone.

The CIRAS Perspective

Humanity is entering an era in which the boundaries between biology, physics, computation, medicine, engineering and technology are becoming increasingly porous.

The great discoveries ahead may therefore require more than deeper specialisation.

They may require new connections between knowledge we already possess — and the courage to investigate relationships we have not yet fully understood.

Dr Johnson brings to CIRAS the perspective of a scientist whose career has moved across the full innovation pathway:

from molecules to biomaterials,
from experiments to patents,
from research to manufacturing,
from established biology to emerging questions in physics.

A scientist grounded in experimental research.

An innovator experienced in translating discovery into technology.

An entrepreneur working across science, intellectual property and commercialisation.

And an interdisciplinary researcher prepared to ask one of science’s oldest questions from a new perspective:

What is life — when we examine it from the molecule to the universe?

At CIRAS, questions of this scale belong at the scientific table.

Because transformational science begins with evidence —

but it often begins one step earlier: with the courage to ask a question that crosses the boundaries of what we thought belonged together.