Paul Bernasconi, Ph.D.
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.