What Happened?
Research Triangle Park, NC-based AgBiome Appointed John Ryals as Founder
About the Company
AgBiome® partners with the microbial world to improve our planet. AgBiome discovers and develops innovative biological and trait products for crop protection. The proprietary GENESIS™ discovery platform efficiently captures diverse, unique microbes for agriculturally relevant applications, and screens them with industry-best assays for insect, disease, and nematode control. Through its commercial subsidiary, AgBiome develops and sells proprietary crop protection solutions. The first of these, Howler®, is a revolutionary fungicide for disease control in a broad variety of crops.
About the Person
Dr. John A. Ryals, Ph.D. serves as the Chief Executive Officer and President at Metabolon, Inc. Dr. Ryals co-founded AgBiome, LLC in 2012. His fields of expertise include agri-bioscience, genetics, biotechnology, and developing small businesses into growth enterprises. He served as the Chief Executive Officer and President of Cogenics Icoria, Inc. since February 2002. In 1997, Dr. Ryals founded Paradigm Genetics, Inc. and served as the Chief Executive Officer, President, from 1997 to 2002 and as a Chief Scientific Officer, from 1997 to 2000. From October 1996 to September 1997, he was a Vice President of Research at Novartis Crop Protection, Inc. and Head of the Biotechnology and Genomics Center of Novartis in Research Triangle Park, North Carolina, where he was responsible for worldwide biotechnology and genomics research and target-based discovery. Dr. Ryals has 15 years of experience in agricultural biotechnology working in various positions at the Agricultural Biotechnology Research Unit of Ciba-Geigy Corporation, including Head of Agricultural Biotechnology Research and Vice President of Biotechnology Research and Intellectual Property at Ciba Seeds, a position that he held from 1993 to 1996. He served as the Chairman of Athenix Corp. He serves as a Director of AgBiome, LLC and Metabolon, Inc. Dr. Ryals serves as a Member of Life Science Advisory Board at The Aurora Funds, Inc. He served as a Director of Cogenics Icoria, Inc. since September 1997. He is an Adjunct Professor at North Carolina State University. Dr. Ryals received a Ph.D. in Molecular Biology from the University of Texas at Dallas in 1982.
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