With nine billion people soon inhabiting the earth, we need to produce more with less. However, production agriculture is ultimately bound by genomes and the traits that are coded for by hundreds of thousands of genetic elements influencing them. Consequently, assembling optimized genomes quickly is challenging and important. We will discuss new approaches to this challenge and identify some evolving problems that require solutions.
Speaker(s)
Spencer Maughan
CEO and Co-Founder, Hi-Fidelity Genetics; Partner, Finistere Ventures
Spencer Maughan is the CEO and co-founder of Hi-Fidelity Genetics, a computational breeding company. Spencer is also a partner at Finistere Ventures, an AgTech focused venture capital (VC) firm, and spends time as part of the University of Wisconsin’s accelerator program as a catalyst. Previously, Spencer was an entrepreneur in residence at Kleiner Perkins and an investor at Venrock, a generalist VC firm in Palo Alto. Before coming to the United States, Spencer was a Marie Curie Fellow at the University of Cambridge (UK). He has a PhD in Genetics and an MBA from Stanford.