Dan is an experienced and successful executive in agri-business, with a passion for business development, new ventures and the power of team momentum. He started his career managing retail outlets, helping his local growers improve their operations with the latest technologies. This grower focus has helped him ensure customer value at every step along his journey leading different aspects of Syngenta seeds and crop protection business for almost two decades, including general management, business development, acquisitions, sales & marketing, agronomy and recently digital agriculture. With excellent business performance, he has gained ever increasing roles in the vegetable seeds, produce, corn and soybean seeds, crop protection and digital agriculture markets. Dan enjoys hiking in the North Carolina mountains and is a voracious reader.

Dr. Pastoor obtained his PhD in toxicology from the University of Michigan and is certified by the American Board of Toxicology (DABT). Dr. Pastoor retired in 2015 from Syngenta as Principal Scientist and founded the company Pastoor Science Communications, LLC, which is centered around his passion for sound science, communicated well. He also continues to provide regulatory and toxicological guidance in product development for several companies. Dr. Pastoor is past president of the Health and Environmental Sciences Institute (HESI) and is a Board member of several small biotechnology start-up companies as well as the American Council on Science and Health (ACSH).

Dr. Pastoor has over 40 years of international experience in fundamental toxicity testing, mode of action research, and human health risk assessment. For most his career, including positions with DuPont, ICI, Zeneca, Novartis, and Syngenta, Dr. Pastoor led toxicology and risk assessment experts in the conduct of safety, health, and environmental studies to assess risk to humans and the environment. In those roles, he was involved in toxicological research projects and product development and was frequently asked to interact with media, community groups, legislators, and regulatory agencies. He is a frequent lecturer on toxicology and risk assessment subjects.

In his “retirement” Dr. Pastoor has remained actively engaged in science, toxicology, risk assessment, and science communication. As founder and CEO of Pastoor Science Communications and through his role as past-president of HESI, he continues to engage global groups from academia, government, and corporations in developing consensus on difficult scientific issues.

Tim is an avid fly fisherman and photographer, and hopes his knees allow him to continue playing tennis for many years to come.

Raj Kaul brings 15 years of experience in Engineering Consulting and consumer products marketing / sales management, and more than 30 years in general management and M&A for Bayer India and Bayer Germany in Ag and related businesses. He’s a former member of several boards of JVs and other listed companies, e.g. Bayer India (a listed company) on behalf of Bayer AG, leading VC in USA on behalf of Bayer AG, Bilag India etc.

Raj has completed about 200 transactions from licensing, JVs, and research agreements, to partnerships, acquisitions and divestments. His single largest transaction was the acquisition of Aventis and its subsequent divestments. retired as member of the Group Leadership Circle of Bayer AG and Senior Vice President of Bayer CropScience AG.

Raj currently serves on the Board of Directors of Gowan, USA, Sajjan Industries, India, Boragen Bio, RTP USA. He is a former Board member of Vindara, RTP USA, and former Chairman of the Board Agrinos AS.

He was an advisor to Bayer Crop Science AG until 2014 and is currently advisor to Oerth Bio as well as a member expert panel of a leading European PE fund. Raj is Managing Partner, RK Associates, a business and advisory consulting company active in India and Europe.

Executive Director of the Plant Sciences Initiative | North Carolina State University

With more than 30 years of experience in the agricultural sector, Adrian Percy is an advocate of the need for and benefits of modern agriculture. He is also a strong proponent of the development and adoption of new agricultural and food technologies that support global food security while conserving the environment and supporting rural community development.

Adrian is the inaugural Executive Director of the Plant Sciences Initiative (PSI) at North Carolina State University as of November 1, 2021. The PSI aims to exploit inter-disciplinary science and technology through public private partnerships to advance the plant sciences to the benefit of growers, consumers, and other food chain stakeholders.

He also is a Venture Partner at Finistere Ventures LLC, a technology and life sciences venture capital investor, focused on transforming the food value chain. Adrian serves on the board of directors of BioLumic, HiFidelity Genetics, and Evogene. He is a member of the science and technology boards of Oerth Bio, Terramera, Biotalys and Rothamsted Research and hosts the AgTech360 podcast on behalf of NC State’s Center for Excellence in Regulatory Science in Agriculture (CERSA).

Prior to joining NC State, Adrian served as the Chief Technology Officer of UPL Ltd a major crop protection company that is a leader in global food systems. Prior, he was the Head of Research and Development for the Crop Science division of Bayer and part of their executive committee. In that role, he had responsibility for internal and open innovation activities in the areas of crop protection chemistry and biologicals, as well as seeds and traits. During his 25-year tenure at Bayer and its legacy companies, he also held numerous positions in agricultural research and development in France, Germany, and the United States.

Born and raised in the United Kingdom, Adrian earned a bachelor’s degree in pharmacology at the University of Liverpool, as well as a master’s degree in toxicology and a doctorate in biochemistry at the University of Birmingham. He now resides in the Research Triangle area of North Carolina, USA, with his wife and two children.

John Salmeron is the Managing Director of S Research Partners LLC, a strategic consulting business working with agtech companies to maximize value from their R&D assets. John held research leadership positions at Syngenta, Intrexon and Precision Biosciences, in seed product development, genomics and genome editing. He was a member of the winning team for the Syngenta Purpose Award, for a novel approach to molecular marker discovery.

John is an adjunct faculty member at North Carolina State University and the University of North Carolina - Chapel Hill. At Chapel Hill he teaches Careers In Biotechnology, giving students exposure to industry professionals and information on career paths.

John earned his A.B. degree at Washington University in St. Louis, his Ph.D. at Duke University, and was a postdoctoral fellow at the University of California at Berkeley, where he isolated one of the first disease resistance genes from plants. He is a Project Management Professional as certified by the Project Management Institute.

Dr. Nitzan Shabek has over 15 years of research experience in the field of protein degradation and ubiquitin system in human and plants. He is a professor and principal investigator in the department of Plant Biology at the University of California, Davis.

Dr. Shabek’s research group integrates cutting edge approaches from the fields of structural biology, biochemistry, molecular biology, and plant biology to elucidate signal transduction pathways and their regulation by the Ubiquitin Proteasome System.

Dr. Shabek earned his PhD in biochemistry with the mentorship of the Nobel Laurate, Dr. Aaron Ciechanover at the Technion-Israel Institute of Technology and has been an HHMI postdoctoral fellow in the University of Washington, Pharmacology Department.

Dr. Shabek received several distinct awards including the National Science Foundation (NSF) CAREER Award, and the 2021 Arthur Neish Award from the American Phytochemical Society.

Helmut is an agronomist with a PhD in agricultural sciences/weed science from the University of Hohenheim, Germany. As visiting scientist with the USDA in Texas, he worked on remote sensing related topics. Consultancies for the German GTZ on weed problems in agricultural production systems brought him to various countries in Africa, Asia and the Middle East.

In 1985 Helmut joined BASF by becoming Manager of the Agric. Research Station in Greenville, Mississippi. In 2003 the WSSA elected him as Honorary Member for his contributions to weed science with a global perspective. He also served as President of the EWRS.

A few years ago Helmut retired from BASF where he had been responsible for most of his 25 years of service for the discovery and development of new herbicides. In addition to this primary function he was appointed Director/VP of Global Development Agricultural Products.

After his retirement Helmut started his own firm “AgroField Consulting”. Most of his projects are related to agriculture and crop protection research, biologicals included.

Dr. Paul Bernasconi has over 25 years of experience in R&D. He is the owner of Bernasconi Consulting, Inc, a company active in the Agribusiness space. He is the part time COO of SOLASTA Bio, a spin-out of the University of Glasgow. As an Executive for BASF Biosciences in Research Triangle Park, Dr. Bernasconi led an international 120 scientist department responsible for all molecular biology and gene editing activities. Dr Bernasconi is a former director of BASF Crop Protection, in charge of the Insecticide biology and molecular biology. He was part of the team that developed Versys, an insecticide with a novel mode of action introduced in the market in 2018.

Dr. Bernasconi’s start-up experience includes a position of Director of Operations at Amphora Pharmaceuticals. He is also a former Director of Biochemistry at Syngenta, responsible for high throughput screening programs in herbicide, insecticide and fungicide discovery. While at Syngenta, he contributed to the commercialization of two herbicides and initiated the research on Dicamba tolerant soybean. He is the holder of over 12 patents in insect control, agrochemicals, microbiome manipulation and genome editing.

Dan Nomura is a Professor of Chemical Biology and Molecular Therapeutics in the Department of Chemistry and the Department of Molecular and Cell Biology in the Division of Molecular Therapeutics at the University of California, Berkeley and an Investigator at the Innovative Genomics Institute. He is an Adjunct Professor in the Department of Pharmaceutical Chemistry at UCSF. Since 2017, he has been the Director of the Novartis-Berkeley Translational Chemical Biology Institute focused on using chemoproteomic platforms to tackle the undruggable proteome. He is Co-Founder of Frontier Medicines, a start-up company focused on using chemoproteomics and machine learning approaches to tackle the undruggable proteome. He is also the Founder of Vicinitas Therapeutics based on his group’s discovery of the Deubiquitinase Targeting Chimera (DUBTAC) platform for targeted protein stabilization. He is on the Scientific Advisory Boards for Frontier Medicines, Vicinitas Therapeutics, Photys Therapeutics, Apertor Pharma, Ecto Therapeutics, and Oerth Bio. Nomura is also on the scientific advisory boards of The Mark Foundation for Cancer Research and the MD Anderson Cancer Center. He is also an Investment Advisory Partner at a16z Bio+Health, an Investment Advisory Board member at Droia Ventures, and an iPartner with The Column Group. He earned his B.A. in Molecular and Cell Biology in 2003 and Ph.D. in Molecular Toxicology in 2008 at UC Berkeley with Professor John Casida and was a postdoctoral fellow at Scripps Research with Professor Benjamin F. Cravatt before returning to Berkeley as a faculty member in 2011. Among his honors include the National Cancer Institute Outstanding Investigator Award, Searle Scholar, and the Mark Foundation for Cancer Research ASPIRE award.

Hartmut van Lengerich is a German agricultural economist with over 30 years of experience in Global strategic and operational roles, including serving as CEO for a Region in Eastern Europe and as CEO for Bayer CropScience in Canada. His last position until mid-2023 was SVP for Portfolio- and Asset Management for the Crop Protection Portfolio of Bayer AG overseeing $ 13 billion in worldwide sales.

Throughout his career, he has been dedicated to delivering results and utilizing strategic foresight to identify opportunities for growth. He has also placed a strong emphasis on developing talented individuals across functions and geographies, recognizing that diversity is key to driving long-term success. Building strong relationships across the sector has also been a priority, as partnerships, licensing and acquisitions have all helped him to generate further insights and lasting businesses.

One of his most notable achievements was playing a fundamental role in the integration of Monsanto and Bayer AG, which involved negotiating with major anti-trust authorities across the globe, including the DoJ in the US, as well as authorities in the EU, Canada, Brazil, China, and Russia.

Based on his broad industry-network and deep knowledge he will provide insights and perspectives on specific future sector needs resulting in guidance on business strategies and organizational developments.

Hartmut is married to Ulrike and has four adult children. In his free time, he enjoys travel with his wife, he takes his running shoes to every travel and is since many years member of literature-circle.