R&I leadership shaped by hands-on manufacturing experience, focused on processes that scale reliably and serve the customer.
Danbury, CT May 18, 2026 – Bedoukian Research has named Dr. Krzysztof Swierczek Director of Research and Innovation (R&I).
Dr. Krzysztof Swierczek’s path at Bedoukian hasn’t followed a traditional corporate ladder. When he joined the R&I team as a PhD chemist in 2012, his background was in academia and pharmaceuticals. He had extensive bench experience, but chemical manufacturing, flavor and fragrance, and insect pheromones were new territory.
What drew him in was how fast the work moved from discovery to market. Given the physical and operational closeness between R&I and manufacturing, he started spending more time on the production side to see how his lab processes behaved at full scale.
Rather than waiting for reports, Swierczek worked directly with the manufacturing chemists and supervisors, staying for extended or overnight shifts to troubleshoot first-time scale-ups on the floor. Those hours on the line built tight relationships with the production team and showed him the difference between a process that works on a bench and one that works in a plant.
After ten years in R&I, production needed more technical oversight. Swierczek moved into the Technical Production Manager role in 2022 and spent the next four years running the floor, gaining a working understanding of the manufacturing side of the business.
He returns to R&I as Director with that combined perspective. Bedoukian spoke with Swierczek about the role and where he plans to take the team.
A conversation with Dr. Swierczek
You’ve been at Bedoukian for many years. What excites you about stepping into this role, and how will it be different from your previous role?
I’m excited about the opportunity to bring together my R&I and production experience to shape how R&I contributes more directly to the business. Having seen what it takes to make processes work at scale, I can help ensure we focus on projects that are not just technically sound, but also commercially impactful.
This role is different from my previous one in that it shifts from day-to-day plant support and troubleshooting to setting direction, prioritizing projects, and building a pipeline that supports growth.
As a director, how do you plan to build a culture of continuous innovation within your team?
I would focus on keeping R&I closely connected to customers and manufacturing so innovation is driven by real business and production needs, not done in isolation. That means prioritizing work with a clear path to scale and commercial impact.
I also think continuous innovation comes from both structure and mindset, including a clear project pipeline, strong feedback loops with production, and a culture where improving existing processes is just as important as developing new ones.
Finally, I would encourage collaboration and ownership by having teammates spend time with production and follow their work through to implementation so innovation does not stop at the lab stage.
You mentioned how much you learned from the operators and supervisors on the floor. What was the value of that open line of communication, and how will it shape your leadership style in this new role?
Working with operators and supervisors gave me a much better understanding of what actually makes a process work at scale versus in the lab. That feedback helped us catch issues early, improve robustness, and make scale-up smoother. It also strengthened trust and communication between R&I and production.
In this role, I want to keep that close feedback loop by maintaining regular interaction with the production floor throughout the entire development and scale-up. The best process development chemists effectively spend time in operators’ shoes at least a few times, and I will actively encourage all R&I chemists to spend as much time as possible on the manufacturing floor during scale-ups.
Overall, it shapes my leadership style by reinforcing that R&I needs to stay closely connected to both the customer and to production. Success is defined by processes that run reliably when scaled up and that ultimately service the customer.
The F&F and Bio industries are evolving rapidly, especially around sustainable chemistry and artificial intelligence. Are there any emerging trends or new technologies that you are particularly excited to explore with the R&I team?
I am personally very excited about using AI tools in a practical way to improve how we work, especially in design of experiments, data and project management, and retrosynthetic analysis. I see strong potential for these tools to help us make better decisions faster and improve the overall efficiency of development work.
At the same time, I do not think AI will replace good chemists anytime soon. It will be a tool that supports decision making, but strong chemical intuition and experience will remain essential, especially in process development and scale-up.
What does continuous innovation look like from the perspective of our F&F customers right now? What are the perfumers and flavorists asking for that we are uniquely positioned to solve?
I’m still building that perspective since I just started in this role.
From what I have seen so far, continuous innovation from F&F customers tends to mean more reliable supply, faster development cycles, and more consistent quality, alongside new molecules that help them differentiate in an increasingly crowded fragrance and flavor space. There is also growing interest in more sustainable and cost-effective solutions that still meet performance expectations. At the end of the day it’s about listening to customer needs and letting that rule our R&I activities.
What I am still working to better understand is exactly where we are most uniquely positioned to solve their problems today and where we can push further. I am actively looking forward to learning more directly from customers and especially from the sales team to better understand what is resonating in the market and where the real unmet needs are.
Innovation often requires agility. How does our setup and culture at Bedoukian allow us to innovate faster or differently than larger competitors?
Our R&I setup is quite agile, which is a real advantage. It is a relatively small team with chemists from different scientific backgrounds, which naturally brings a broader range of thinking to problem solving.
We also do not have many layers of management, and R&I reports directly to the CEO. That makes decision making faster and keeps priorities aligned without a lot of organizational friction.
Compared to larger competitors, this allows us to move more quickly from idea to execution, stay closer to production realities, and adjust direction when needed without long approval chains.
Is there a recent project or scale-up success that you feel perfectly represents the kind of innovation Bedoukian will be focusing on moving forward?
I am going to hide a bit behind trade secrets on the details, but I can share the general direction.
We are currently scaling up a new route for a strategically important product. This route applies innovative chemistry that came out of our R&I work through the sustained efforts of many chemists over the years, following principles of continuous optimization, and is now being translated into a robust manufacturing process.
What makes it a good example of where we are heading is that it is not just a technical advancement, but also has a clear business impact, with a meaningful increase in margins.
About Bedoukian Research
Bedoukian Research, Inc. is a family-owned specialty chemical company founded in 1972 and headquartered in Danbury, Connecticut. Through its Bedoukian Flavor & Fragrance brand it supplies aroma chemicals and blends for flavor, fragrance, and personal care applications. The company also provides custom manufacturing for pharmaceutical, biotech, and agrochemical clients.
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