Dave Jessen

Dave Jessen Ph.D. is principal of Jessen West LLC, a consulting service focused on agricultural seed, trait and technology research, and product development. He has over 30 years of experience spearheading agricultural biotechnology, plant breeding, and product development, with numerous varieties, hybrids, and transgenic events successfully commercialized. He has also spent considerable time and effort in the application and integration of genomic technologies, statistical genetics, and marker-trait associations to plant breeding programs. Since 2013, he has supplied consulting services to several leading corporations, both large multinationals as well as emerging start-up companies. From 2013-2015, he also served the role of Chief Technology Officer of BioN2, Inc., an entity in the agricultural technology sector focused on nitrogen utilization in maize. Prior to 2013, he was CTO of Chromatin, who developed and licensed its mini-chromosome gene stacking technology to four of the big six Ag Seed/Chemical companies. Previously to Chromatin, David was with Syngenta, where he served as the Head of Traits & Technology for Corn and Soy, and held several strategic leadership roles within the company, including Global Head, Field Crops R&D, and Vice President of Research and Development at Novartis Seeds. Dr. Jessen also directed and managed trait and breeding programs at Pioneer Hi-Bred for 12 years.