Ido is CEO at Lavie Bio. Previously he served as Executive Vice President & General Manager Ag-Biologicals at Evogene and Executive Vice President & General Manager Crop Enhancement and Director of Business Development. Prior to this, Ido headed the Israeli Small & Mid-Size Enterprise business activity at SAP, the world leading organizational software company. Prior to his role at SAP, Ido led a business unit at Niram Gitan Group, a leading Israeli management-consulting firm.

Ido holds an MBA degree and a B.Sc. degree in Industrial Engineering, both from Tel Aviv University

Jim is the Chief Operating Officer at Lavie Bio. Previously he served as VP R&D and Director of Molecular Biology and Analytics at Calyxt. Jim also was Director of US Insect Control at Evogene. Prior to his role at Evogene, Jim was a senior research manager at DuPont Pioneer.

James received his PhD in Entomology from the University of California, Berkeley. He conducted his postdoctoral research in Entomology at the University of Florida.

Michael Ionescu is the VP Research of Lavie-Bio. For the last 6 years, Michael has lead the research and optimization activities of novel microbiome-based ag-biological to drive food quality, agriculture productivity and sustainability.

Michael received his PhD degrees from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem in Life Sciences and Environmental Studies, researching stress response mechanisms in enteric bacteria. He had conducted his postdoctoral research at the University of California at Berkeley in phytopathology, studying cell-cell communication systems in plant pathogens with relation to interaction with host plant.

Amir is leading the development activities at Lavie Bio. Previously, Amir served as the operations and Formulation manager for Agrogreen (Minrav), later aquired by Bayer, and as formulation manager for Ecogen Il. Since 1990, Mr. Bercovitz has been involved in the development and production of microbial based products, mainly biopesticides based on live microorganisms - including commercially available Bionematicides (BioNem, Flocter, Nortica, Votivo) and Biofungicides (Aspire, AQ-10, Shemer).

Mr. Bercovitz holds an MSc. Degree in Microbiology from the Hebrew university, Jerusalem

Ofer Haviv holds the position of Evogene’s President and CEO as of late 2004. Prior to that he held the positions of company COO and CFO from 2002 to 2004 and was involved in Evogene’s spin-off from Compugen in 2002. At Compugen, he held the position of Director of Finance and Treasurer of Compugen (NASDAQ: CGEN) for four years, during which time the company completed two private placements and an IPO on NASDAQ

Mr. Haviv holds a B.A. degree in Economics and Accounting from Faculty of Management, Tel Aviv University and is a Certified Public Accountant in Israel.

Business Executive focused on Transformational Business Development and M&A.

Previously served Vice President New Business Development at Atos Medical AB, Sweden where he led the M&A and business development activity. Prior to that Mr. Bjørneboe worked for 10 years at Novozymes where he held the position of VP business development and led numerous M&A transactions as part of Novozymes Ag-Biologicals division establishment. Mr. Bjørneboe holds advisory roles in various companies including blue-chip and start-up companies and an ag-tech focused VC. Mr. Bjørneboe had previously held a position with McKinsey & Company.

He currently serves as board member and treasurer of Dansk-Israelsk Selskab (Danish-Israeli Society), since 2017.

Mr. Bjørneboe holds an MSc in Management of Technology: a science and technology-oriented MBA program at Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), Sloan School of Management as well as a M.Sc. in Applied Mathematics from The Technical University of Denmark.

Mr. Thiessen is a senior agriculture executive highly experienced in commercial areas including marketing, sales, and go-to-market with global experience.

Mr. Thiessen previously served as President of Novozymes BioAg Inc, VP of Novozyme, where he was responsible for the all the BioAg business within the Novozymes organization overseeing its global commercial activities.

Mr. Thiessen previously also held managerial positions at Monsanto and at Philom Bios Inc, ag-biologicals company that was acquired by Novozymes, and is currently co-owner of Redekop manufacturing, an agriculture equipment manufacturer.

Mr. Thiessen holds an MBA and a Bachelor of Commerce; Finance/Marketing both from the University of Saskatchewan.

Rowdy Smith is the Global Portfolio Leader for the Seed Applied & Biological Technologies for Corteva Agriscience™, Agriculture Division of DowDuPont™. He leads the global strategic vision and provides direction for the portfolio and business. In that capacity, he directs the overall business operations which include: research and development, business development, technology scouting, technical services, product management and strategic relationships.

Rowdy joined DuPont Pioneer in 2001 and has worked in a variety of finance, marketing, commercial and strategy leadership roles within the seed business and corporate levels. Rowdy also led the integration management office and was responsible for developing Corteva’s integration plans associated with the merger between Dow and DuPont. Prior to his current role, Rowdy led the global Seed Platform strategy and was responsible for overseeing the end-to-end strategic planning process.

He earned his Bacherlor of Science from Northwest Missouri State Univeristy and his Certified Public Account license for the state of Iowa in 1999. He also served four years in the United States Navy.

Dr. Karchi is co-founder of Evogene and served as its CEO from 2002 to 2004. Prior to the spin-off of Evogene from Compugen he was the Co-Head of Compugen's Plant Genomic Division. He has over 15 years experience in the breeding of tomatoes and in molecular genomics research. His scientific achievements include the development of a molecular system for gene discovery and the development of high yielding, high quality greenhouse tomato varieties. Dr. Karchi has lectured widely in the field of plant genomics and has an extensive record of publications and patents.

Dr. Karchi holds B.Sc and M.Sc degrees from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem's Faculty of Agriculture, specializing in gene expression. He holds a Ph.D. from The Weizmann Institute of Science and the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Israel.

Dr. Angela Sessitsch heads the Bioresources Unit of the AIT Austrian Institute of Technology. She studied biochemistry at the University of Technology in Graz, Austria, holds a PhD in Microbiology from the Wageningen University, the Netherlands, and is habilitated at the Vienna University of Natural Resources and Life Sciences. She has pioneered plant-associated microbiomes, particularly in the endosphere, and is interested in understanding the interactions between plants, microbiomes and the environment as well as to develop applications. Her group explores the diversity and functioning of plant microbiota by applying a range of molecular approaches, interaction modes between plants and model bacteria, colonization behaviour of endophytes as well as various application technologies for biocontrol and crop enhancement applications. A. Sessitsch published more than 150 peer-reviewed publications and has a h-index (Web of Science) of 53.

Prof. Naama Barkai is a professor in the departments of Molecular Genetics and Physics of Complex Systems at the Weizmann Institute of Science in Rehovot, Israel and a member of of the European Molecular Biology Organization (EMBO), the European Bioinformatics Institute (EBI), the ERC Starting Grant evaluation panel, the European Molecular Biology Laboratory (EMBL), Academia Europaea, and of the Israel Academy of Sciences and Humanities.
Prof. Naama Barkai received her PhD in Theoretical Physics in 1995 from the Hebrew University where she Graduated Summa Cum Laude in the studies of “Statistical Mechanicsof Learning“. Her Post-Doctoral Fellow at the Physics Department, Princeton University in Princeton, New Jersey focused on Theoretical Study of Biochemical Networks.
Prof. Barkai lab research is focused at the interface between mathematics and biology and understanding the biological constraints that are imposed on a particular system, and the impact of those constraints on the structural design of the network while developing novel solutions for fundamental biological problems such as nutrient homeostasis systems and the organization of the cellular transcription programs.