Jacqueline Heard, Ph.D., M.B.A.

Jacqueline is the Founder and CEO of Enko Chem, Inc and she serves as an independent Director on the Board of genXtraits. Her career has centered around the support of innovation in the agriculture sector through the identification and commercialization of new technology. She has been an entrepreneur, leader of global R&D, and venture investor at Monsanto, Flagship Pioneering, and Anterra Capital.

Jacqueline currently leads Enko in its work to design safe and sustainable solutions to agricultural problems, from pest resistance to new diseases, by applying the latest drug discovery and development approaches from pharma to agriculture. Enko scientists combine DNA-encoded library screening, machine learning, and structure-based design to find novel modes of action more quickly than traditional R&D methods. The company is backed by top tier investors including the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and is a Technology Pioneer with the World Economic Forum.

Jacqueline received a Ph.D. in Biology from Boston College and an MBA from the MIT Sloan School of Management.

Joseph Halstead

Joe is an entrepreneur and investor with more than two decades of experience in founding and building successful businesses. He has a technical background in physiology and pharmacology and has a particular interest in the health, fitness and nutrition sectors. Joe is currently Head of Research for Ultimate Performance, the world's leading Personal Training business. He was educated at Cambridge University in the U.K. and holds an M.A. in Natural Sciences.

Omer Ayfer

Omer currently runs a consulting business that offers fractional CIO services for startup companies, with a focus on information security and cloud based infrastructure. He has spent the last decade in “head of IT” roles at several biotechnology organizations ranging from molecular diagnostics to agriculture. Previously he was a programmer working on improving the interface between scientists and compute resources. In addition, Omer is a frequent speaker at executive education programs offered by the Haas School of Business in Berkeley, and is an Adjunct Professor at Merritt College where he teaches a variety of courses in the premier cybersecurity program at the community college level. He holds a BS in Computer Engineering from Purdue University. When not in front of a computer, he can be found cooking elaborate meals with his two sons and wife in Oakland, California.

Roger Hellens, Ph.D.

Roger is a co-founder of genXtraits and the inventor of novel genome mining algorithms which form the core of the company’s technology platform. A well-recognized specialist in the field of post-transcriptional gene regulation, he has 30 years of experience of leading applied research in the life sciences sector, spanning the areas of molecular biology, bioinformatics, genetics, cell biology and crop breeding.

Roger currently holds the position of Chief Technology Officer at the Kiwifruit Breeding Centre (KBC) in New Zealand, where he is spearheading the adoption of modern genomics tools to accelerate the discovery of new kiwifruit varieties. Before joining the KBC, Roger was the General Manager – Forest to Timber Products at Scion, the New Zealand institute for forestry, where he helped to set up the New Zealand Timber Design Centre. Prior to Scion, Roger was Professor of Agricultural Biotechnology and the Deputy Executive Director of the Institute for Future Environments (IFE) at the Queensland University of Technology (QUT), where he helped establish Australia’s National tree genomics program.

Roger received doctoral and postdoctoral training at the John Innes Centre in Norwich, UK, where he developed the first genetic maps of peas (including his PhD on the molecular basis of Mendel’s white flower phenotype). He also established the pGreen plant transformation vector and studied gene silencing (RNAi) in petunia. Roger received a PhD in Molecular Genetics from the University of East Anglia in 1995 and a Bachelor of Science from the University of Liverpool in 1989.