Our Team

Dirk Hackenberger, PhD – Co-Founder and Chief Science Officer of Claryx, a genomic biosurveillance company advancing wastewater and air-based pathogen detection

Dirk Hackenberger

Chief Science Officer

Dirk Hackenberger completed his PhD under Dr. Gerry Wright, a top antimicrobial resistance researcher at McMaster University’s Institute for Infectious Disease Research. During his Ph.D., his primary focus was the diagnosis, surveillance, and characterization of infectious diseases using DNA sequencing. His secondary focus was on natural product antibiotic discovery using genome mining.

His work has been published in journals such as Nature Communications, Cell Host and Microbe, and Applied and Environmental Microbiology.

Kurt Hackenberger – Co-Founder and Chief Executive Officer of Claryx, a company using genomic biosurveillance to prevent infections through wastewater and air monitoring.

Kurt Hackenberger

Chief Executive Officer

Kurt Hackenberger most recently served as a Vice President at The Carlyle Group in New York, where he led diligence on +350 opportunities in the Software & Technology Credit group – driving ~$3.1Bn of commitments spanning enterprise SaaS, digital infrastructure, and healthcare IT. Earlier in his career, he held roles in private equity and investment banking, building a strong foundation in assessing value drivers across diverse industries and business models.

He earned a Bachelor of Commerce (Honors) degree, majoring in Finance, from Queen’s University in Canada.