Future of Sustainability - Agricultural System

TO GROW

FASTER AND HEALTHIER

TOWARD SUSTAINABLE AGRICULTURAL SYSTEMS IN THE 21ST CENTURY

As the world’s population nearly reaches 10 billion in the year 2050, global crop production will need to double to meet the projected demands for food, feed, fiber, biochemicals, and phytomedicines. We at AFINGEN® are an agriculture biotechnology company aiming to enhance crop production and meet the natural resource demand in a new sustainable manner.

MANAGEMENT TEAM

Ai Oikawa, Ph.D.

CEO/CSO

Ai Oikawa, Ph.D. is the founder and CEO/CSO of AFINGEN® and has been developing new plant biotechnology platforms for sustainable food, feed, fiber, and fuel production. Her research has been awarded by Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) programs from the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE), United States Department of Agriculture (USDA), and the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) to improve global food security and environmental sustainability. After receiving a Ph.D. in Agricultural Bioprocess Engineering, she spent a year at Yale University as a visiting scholar for Molecular, Cellular, and Developmental Biology and completed postdoctoral training at the University of California, Berkeley (UC Berkeley)/Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) for Biochemistry and Computational System Biology. She also joined the Harvard Business School Agribusiness Executive Program and the University of California, Davis (UC Davis) School of Law, Intellectual Property & Technology Transfer Education Program, for Technology Integration and Commercialization.

Crunchbase: https://www.crunchbase.com/person/ai-oikawa#section-overview
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ai-oikawa/

Carolyn Fritz, M.B.A

Biotech-Business Consultant

Carolyn Fritz, M.B.A. has over twenty years of experience in successfully building industrial biotechnology businesses. From 2004-2014, she built Allylix from a startup, raising $34 million in venture financing, creating a pipeline of products for the flavor & fragrance and insect control markets, establishing key strategic partnerships, and scaling up and commercializing the first two products, to the successful sale of the company to a European biotechnology company, Evolva, in 2014. From 1999 to 2004, at Dow Chemical, she built a renewable chemical business and a biopharmaceutical contract manufacturing business. From 1993 to 1999, at Cargill, she built a plant biotechnology business focused on developing new food ingredients and industrial products from canola oil. As part of the Afingen team, she places particular emphasis on strategy and commercialization plans to penetrate the markets and build the company.

Kenneth Davenport, Ph.D.

AgTech-Strategy Consultant

Kenneth Davenport, Ph.D. is an agricultural industry veteran, having served in leadership and executive capacities as Vice President of Strategy & CTO of Chromatin, Inc., Director of New Business Ventures with Bayer CropScience, GmbH, and CEO of ArborGen, LLC. Ken has held numerous leadership and executive roles focused on strategy and its implementation at the leading edge of novel technology and unique commercial opportunities ranging from chemistry and biotechnology to biopharma and agricultural (e.g., cotton, forestry, specialty crops) industries. Prior to entry into the ag-biotech, seed, and related industries, he served as Director of Central Research for Hoechst Celanese. As part of the Afingen team, he places particular emphasis on Afingen’s product development; regulatory, intellectual property and out-licensing strategies; and approaches to third-party leaders in the ag-biotech, planting seed, and related industries.

ADVISORS

Keith Newhouse, Ph.D.

Keith Newhouse Ph.D. is a strategic-business veteran in Ag-biotech, who was most recently Director of Business Development with the Land O’Lakes SUSTAIN business unit and had been a 16-year employee of Land O’Lakes. His commercial experience over the past 35 years has included the development and launch of new seed and biotech products and technologies for a number of agriculture companies, including Monsanto, BASF, Syngenta, and Bayer. Since retirement from Land O’Lakes, he has been engaged in business consulting projects related to agricultural sustainability. Previous activities for the Land O’Lakes included: leading strategic planning for Land O’Lakes’s Seed business; oversight of the sunflower, canola and sugar beets programs; leadership in building a consolidated and full-scope forages program; start-up and integration of a Mexico tropical corn breeding program, and the international testing and licensing of forages and tropical corn. Previous sustainability solution roles for Land O’Lakes included topic area leadership for WinField® United business, and also led the overall Land O’Lakes corporate sustainability program for one year. He has a Ph.D. in genetics and plant breeding from Iowa State University.

Bill Shelander, M.B.A.

Bill Shelander, M.B.A. is Co-Director of Cleantech to Market program at the University of California, Berkeley (UC Berkeley), Haas School of Business, and had been the Business Development expert for Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab), a position aimed at enhancing the entrepreneurial awareness within the Lab’s research community with an emphasis on helping to create startups. He has over 20 years of experience managing nearly $180 million in venture funds and returned over $600 million. He has invested in and helped to start dozens of high technology companies. He has seen both investment failures and successes with a distinguished track record as an officer or director of companies acquired or listed on NASDAQ. He has a BS in Systems Engineering with a minor in physics, an MS in Chemical Engineering, and an MBA from Stanford.

LATEST NEWS

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AFINGEN was introduced in ABPDU partners map on DOE Bioenergy Technologies Office (BETO)’s article

Source: https://www.energy.gov/eere/bioenergy/articles/abpdu-celebrates-successes-and-its-50th-industry-partner The ABPDU serves as a scale-up testbed for collaborators developing technologies that transform raw materials—such as plants and waste—into sustainable...

AFINGEN was introduced in TechAccel Ag Biotech Market Map 2020: Stunning growth in Ag Biotech Market investments

Source: https://techaccel.net/2020/03/26/stunning-growth-in-ag-biotech-market-investments/ Two years ago, we shared a map of the Ag Biotech Market that showed 245 startups working in plant and animal biotechnology. Since that original map, we’ve continued to track the...

AFINGEN’s new patent-pending APFL technology was published on World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO): WO2019148193

Source: WO2019148193 COMPOSITIONS AND METHODS FOR INCREASING PLANT GROWTH AND IMPROVING MULTIPLE YIELD-RELATED TRAITS The present invention relates to genetic constructs and transgenic plants with vascular xylem tissue-targeting overexpression of transcription...