Board of Directors
John Hamer (Chairman)
Dr. Hamer is a Managing Director at Burrill & Co., a San Francisco-based Life Sciences Merchant Bank. He has over 25 years experience in life sciences and biotechnology and is a former Professor of Biological Sciences at Purdue University. He held senior management positions in Paradigm Genetics Inc. including VP of Research, CSO and later CEO. More recently he founded and served as CEO of Arête Therapeutics Inc.
Daphne Preuss (Chief Executive Officer)
Daphne Preuss is the CEO and co-founder of Chromatin, Inc., a biotech company that is using its proprietary technology and sorghum seed products to develop feedstocks for renewable energy markets. At Chromatin, she has assembled technology and crop production capabilities and has commercialized the company's synthetic chromosome technology through partnerships with leading agriculture companies. Prior to joining Chromatin in 2006, Preuss led a research laboratory at the Howard Hughes Medical Institute and the University of Chicago, where her team made the first discoveries that led to synthetic chromosomes in plants. She serves on Board of the Biotechnology Industry Organization and is a member of its Food & Agriculture Governing Section Board. Preuss earned a Ph.D. from MIT, and performed postdoctoral work at Stanford.
George Arida
Mr. Arida is a Managing Director at Venture Investors LLC, a Madison-based venture capital firm, with a focus on healthcare investments. Mr. Arida also serves on the Board of Directors of Zystor Therapeutics Inc., Celleration Inc., ProCertus BioPharm Inc., and Nerites Corporation. Prior to joining Venture Investors, he served as CFO of a financial consulting and brokerage firm and previously held senior management, marketing, and process engineering positions with U.S. Filter Corporation, Betz Laboratories, and Alar Engineering. He is also a Founding Director of the Mid-America Healthcare Investors Network.
Sanford Grossman
Dr. Sanford Grossman founded Quantitative Financial Strategies, Inc. in 1988 to develop investment models based on his scientific research discoveries in the fields of economics and quantitative finance. Dr. Grossman received his PhD from the University of Chicago; he is currently a Trustee and a member of its Investment Committee. He has held academic appointments at Stanford, University of Chicago, Princeton and at Wharton School of Business. Dr. Grossman was an Economist with the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System and a Public Director of the Chicago Board of Trade. He has served as Director, VP and President of the American Finance Association. Dr. Grossman's original contributions to economic research received official recognition when he was awarded the John Bates Clark Medal by the American Economic Association in 1987.
Armand Lavoie
Mr. Lavoie is Managing Director of Foragen Technologies Management, Inc. and is responsible for sourcing, evaluating and managing investments in new technologies. Prior to joining Foragen, he was a KPMG consultant where he worked extensively with companies in their start-up, early commercialization and growth phases. Many of these companies were focused on agricultural technologies including nutraceuticals and functional food. Mr. Lavoie also specializes in value-added agricultural processing.
John Greaves
Dr. Greaves has over twenty-one years of business and research leadership experience in the agri-biotechnology industry. In his current role as the Worldwide Director, Specialty Crop Improvement at Kemin Industries, Inc., Dr. Greaves coordinates a global team of plant breeders, horticulturalists, analytical chemists and field agronomists with research programs located in the USA, China and India using plants to produce target molecules. Previously, Dr. Greaves has held several executive roles, including: President of Hy-Line International, President of Kemin Agri-Foods, North America and Vice President of Research & Development for Kemin Industries, Inc., and Kemin Biotechnology, L.C.
Meghan Sharp
Meghan Sharp is a member of the corporate venture team within BP Alternative Energy. Meghan focuses on bio-based investments, and is also responsible for incubating new businesses affiliated with the Energy Biosciences Institute, a BP Group Technology partnership with University of California, Berkeley and University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign. Meghan serves on the board of Chromatin and Verdezyne and is a board observer for LubriGreen. Meghan received her Ph.D. in Bacterial Genetics from the University of California, San Francisco, performed post-doctoral work at the University of Chicago and the Carnegie Institution of Washington at Stanford University, and received her MBA from Columbia University.