Jonathan Trent is a former civil servant at NASA who left his position to found UpCycle Systems, a company focused on tackling the food, water, and energy crises. Trent has had an illustrious career in marine science, microbiology and cell biology, medicine, nanotechnology, engineering, and environmental sciences. His educational background includes a Ph.D. in Biological Oceanography from Scripps Institution of Oceanography and postdoctoral studies in Molecular Biology of Extremophiles at Max Planck Institute for Biochemistry and microbial physiology at Yale University School of Medicine. Trent has also held positions at the University of Copenhagen, University of Paris at Orsay, Boyer Center for Molecular Medicine at Yale Medical School, Argonne National Lab, Tokyo University Agriculture and Technology, and the California Academy of Science.

From 2010-2013, Trent led the NASA/CEC project "OMEGA," which aimed to create a system for growing microalgae on wastewater in floating photobioreactors to produce biofuels. He concluded that to produce biofuels sustainably, an integrated system was necessary that included aquaculture for food, wastewater treatment and reuse, and solar for electricity and heat. In 2013, Trent focused on the OMEGA Global initiative (OGI) to bring integrated food, water, and energy solutions to coastal communities. In 2018, he pivoted from offshore systems to an onshore design that he now calls UpCycle Systems.