Mike Koziel

Mike Koziel is one of the founders of the Agricultural Biotechnology industry. He started in agricultural biotechnology over 30 years ago, at the dawn of the field. Mike led the team at Ciba Seeds that invented and developed the first GM insect control corn product, Maximizer™ brand corn. This team also discovered the vegetative insecticidal proteins (VIPs), now found in the Syngenta product, Viptera™ insect-resistant corn. He subsequently lead the team at Pioneer Hi-Bred that developed, in collaboration with Dow, the Herculex® corn products. Mike then co-founded Athenix Corp., which discovered multiple novel trait genes that are now in deregulation or under development with multiple partners. Athenix was bought in 2009 by Bayer CropScience for $400M.