Tony Liu
Dr. Liu is the Chief Scientific Officer and a Co-Founder of Boragen Inc., a startup that leverages a novel boron chemistry platform to address important crop and animal health problems. Dr. Liu obtained his Ph.D. in chemistry in 2011 from Queen’s University in Canada. Subsequently, he joined Dr. Benkovic’s research group at Pennsylvania State University as a Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada (NSERC) postdoctoral research fellow. It is out of this postdoctoral work that Boragen Inc. took shape; now based in North Carolina, Dr. Liu leads Boragen's world-class science and research team in the development of next-generation technologies that will uphold stewardship practices. Over the years Dr. Liu has generated over 30 peer reviewed articles and 9 patents/applications.
Richard LaDuca
Currently Rich is part of the technology leadership team within DuPont’s Industrial Biosciences (IB) Business. He works within a portfolio management team and has direct responsibilities for resource allocation for projects within IB as well as with our cross pillar partner programs. He has 34 years of experience in the development of bio-based products and new business initiatives.
Rich started his career in industrial biotechnology in 1984 as a research scientist when he joined Kodak’s Research Labs working with an interdisciplinary team to develop microbial cell factories to produce biochemicals. He has worked on programs to produce lysine, threonine, biotin, tryptophan, indigo and ascorbic acid. He was part of the Kodak team that helped form Genencor International where his efforts transitioned from research to business development. He has had an active role in establishing partnering relationships in the biochemicals and biomaterials science areas with companies such as Archer Daniels Midland (ADM), Eastman Chemical Co. (Ascorbic Acid) , Dow Corning (Silicon Biotechnology Platform) and The Goodyear Tire & Rubber Company (BioIsoprene).
Rich holds a Ph.D. in Microbial Cell Physiology from The University of Buffalo (Roswell Park Mem. Inst.) and completed a Post doctoral Fellowship Program in Biochemistry at the University of Rochester.
John Gannon, Ph.D.
Currently, John serves as the Microbiome Platform Technical Team Leader within DuPont’s Industrial Biosciences. He designed, initiated, and developed the technical infrastructure that serves as the research platform for Microbiome related initiatives and leads the Microbiome technical team for the DuPont Industrial Biosciences business. He has 27 years of experience with DuPont and has served as the lead scientist and/or technical leader for a variety of microbiology, microbial ecology, and environmental fate-related initiatives.
He was recruited by DuPont in 1991 to start up DuPont’s environmental fate competency for industrial chemicals. He became globally-recognized as a leading industrial expert in environmental sciences, which is based on his unique combination of expertises in biodegradation, microbial ecology, microbial physiology, environmental chemistry, and computational sciences. He has served on Science Advisory Boards, advisory groups, and expert panels for Environment Canada, U.S. EPA, Trent University, Rutgers Environmental & Occupational Safety & Health Institute, and currently with the NJ Department of Environmental Protection. Over the last 5 years, he has focused his work on microbiology related initiatives focused on further development of DuPont’s Microbiome Platform.
He received his Ph.D. in Microbiology from New York University and his Postdoc was in the laboratory of Dr. Martin Alexander at Cornell University.
Benedict Auld
Benedict H. Auld is the founder and CEO of Lapidarius, a strategy consultancy in New York City. Ben has helped brands in health, wellness and beauty grow and change over the entirety of his career.
Mike Selden
(LinkedIn) Mike Selden's background in Biochemistry and Molecular Biology has played a big role in him dedicating his life to climate justice and science advocacy. He has always been very politically active and considers his work now to be an extension of that. Before co-founding Finless Foods, he was working at the Mount Sinai Icahn School of Medicine in high-throughput cancer screening. His university research projects were twofold, one focusing on fungal epigenetics to solve food crises and the other on the evolutionary biomechanics of the mantis shrimp. He was a high school chemistry teacher at Wagor International school in Taichung Taiwan, where he ended up learning enough Chinese to become co-editor in chief of ChinaSMACK, a website that translates Chinese news for the English speaking world. He also has done work at New Harvest, a non-profit forwarding research in the clean meat field.
