Overview
Sophie Roelants is co-founder and chief operating officer of AmphiStar, a position she has held since April 2024. She is based in Gent.
Roelants co-founded AmphiStar in July 2021 and served as its chief executive officer until May 2024, when she moved to the role of chief operating officer. She has also sat on the company's executive board since August 2021.
Before that she worked at Bio Base Europe Pilot Plant, where she was an R&D project coordinator from January 2015 to May 2024 and, from September 2019, innovation manager for biosurfactants in a joint role with UGENT. She was a postdoctoral scientist at Ghent University from July 2013 to May 2024, having completed a PhD there between January 2009 and June 2013.
She studied at Ghent University from 2004 to 2007, obtaining a master's degree in bioengineering sciences with a specialisation in cell and gene biotechnology, and also studied at Delft University of Technology.
Career history
In the news
- Two conferences, lots of conversations, and plenty of reasons to be excited about what's next. 👀 COSMETIC360: That's a wrap! Two busy days in Paris, with plenty of interest in what our glycolipid biosurfactants bring to personal care: COSMOS approval, skin microbiome-friendly properties, all powered by upcycled raw materials. 🌱 SEPAWA: We're not done yet! From personal care to home care, the conversations are all about making ingredients work in real formulations. Some highlights: 🌱 AmphiClean A: our glycolipid biosurfactant,
- This week, you'll find the AmphiStar team in two places at once. 📍 Cosmetic 360 | Paris | 14-15 October 📍 SEPAWA | Berlin | 14-16 October And while the events may be different, the conversations often come back to the same challenge: How do we create ingredients that are both high-performing and more sustainable? At COSMETIC 360, we'll be talking about the future of personal care, microbiome-friendly formulations and the opportunities created by our AmphiCare line. At SEPAWA, the focus shifts towards formulation performance,
- De influencer | Amphistar-medeoprichtster Sophie Roelants: 'In mijn koelkast staat de mosterdpot centraal'Wat inspireert en pleziert bio-ingenieur Sophie Roelants (43)? Ze is medeoprichtster en operationeel directeur van Amphistar, door De Tijd uitgeroepen tot Changemaker 2026. Met behulp van micro-organismen maakt de Gentse start-up uit afvalstromen duurzame ingrediënten voor cosmetica en detergenten.
De Tijd Ondernemen · 9 Oct 2026
- SEPAWA 2026, we’ll see you in Berlin! 🫧 📅 14-16 October 2026 📍Booth C445 Every year, formulators face the same balancing act: ✅ Performance ✅ Consumer expectations ✅ Sustainability goals ✅ Cost pressures ✅ Regulatory requirements None of those challenges exist in isolation. That's why the most interesting conversations rarely start with: "Tell me about your ingredient." They start with: "We're struggling with..." Foam. Compatibility. Mildness. Wetting. Reformulation. Palm-free targets. Fossil reduction goals. If you're
- You know you have come full circle when your childhood babysitter is in the audience for your keynote. 😅 That was the slightly surreal setting as our co-founder Sophie Roelants took the stage at the 40th anniversary celebration of Private Capital Belgium. Fortunately, Belgium has no shortage of remarkable entrepreneurial stories. Sophie shared ours: how AmphiStar is using biotechnology to transform waste streams into high-performing, sustainable biosurfactants that go into your shampoo, hand wash, kitchen cleaner, … Across
- If the law changes, the world changes." Sophie Roelants said it best. As a startup trying to reinvent how surfactants are made, we know that great technology is only part of the equation. Smart regulation, sustainability incentives, and access to funding are equally important for scaling. Thanks to Circular Bio-based Europe Joint Undertaking (CBE JU), we had the opportunity to work alongside fantastic partners in the WASTE2FUNC Project across the value chain and demonstrate that waste streams can become high-performance
- Dank aan voogdijminister Matthias Diependaele om dit portefeuillebedrijf van het Flanders Future Techfund mee te helpen op de kaart te zetten. AmphiStar is een mooi voorbeeld van jaren van onderzoek, technologische expertise en vooral ook de ambitie om waardevolle innovatie uit Vlaanderen naar de markt te brengen. Precies daar ligt de rol van FFTF, dat gemanaged wordt door PMV. Het fonds ondersteunt ondernemingen in een zeer vroege fase, wanneer technologie vaak al veel potentieel heeft, maar de weg naar verdere ontwikkeling,
- Following the visibility and recognition we received through the Changemaker Awards by De Tijd and BNP Paribas, we recently welcomed Minister-President Matthias Diependaele and Communications Advisor Charlotte Coucke to our HQ and labs. We had an open and engaging conversation about what it really means to build a biotech company in Belgium and Europe: the opportunities, the obstacles, the long timelines, and the ambition required to turn science into impact. What stood out was the genuine curiosity and openness shown
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