Mr Ivan ONG

Ivan is the co-founder and COO of BugBoom, a Singapore-based circular economy startup transforming organic solid waste into resources through its aerobic microbial-accelerated composting machines, and spearheading sustainability workshops to provide education and awareness for adults and students from various educational institutions. With 5 years of operational experience as a Black Soldier Fly Larvae (BSFL) specialist, his technical expertise centres on exploiting the behavioural characteristics of black soldier fly larvae to manipulate the BSFL lifecycle and extend the BSFL developmental period by 2 months through BSFL hibernation and thermoregulation. Since BugBoom's incorporation in 2024, Ivan has led the company to win the runner-up prize for the 2nd Kumar Sustainability and Innovation and to receive the Chua Thian Poh Entrepreneurship Education Venture Award. In 2025, Ivan's innovations led BugBoom's team, called 'BugCycle', to emerge as finalists in Rethink Food Challenge 2025, an international hackathon organised by Wageningen University and Research (WUR), among 46 teams from 148 universities across 50 countries.