Richard W. Hamilton, Ph.D. became a Director of the company in March 2017. From 1998 to 2002, he served as Chief Financial Officer of Ceres, Inc., an agricultural biotechnology company that developed and marketed seeds and traits to produce crops for animal feed, sugar, and other markets. From 2002 to 2016, Dr. Hamilton became a member of the board of directors at Ceres. In 2016, Ceres was acquired by Land O'Lakes. In addition to his leadership role there, Dr. Hamilton has sat on the Keck Graduate Institute Advisory Council and he was a founding member of the Council for Sustainable Biomass Production. He has served on the U.S. Department of Energy's Biomass Research and Development Technical Advisory Committee and has been active in the Biotechnology Industry Organization where he has served as Vice Chairman of the organization, chaired its Food and Agriculture Governing Board, and served in other leadership roles. From 1996 to 1998, Dr. Hamilton was a Principal at Oxford Bioscience Partners, one of the leading investors in the genomics field, and a founder of Ceres. He was an Associate at Boston-based MVP Ventures from 1993 to 1996. From 1990 to 1992, he was a Howard Hughes Medical Institute Research Fellow at Harvard Medical School. Dr. Hamilton holds a Ph.D. in molecular biology from Vanderbilt University and a B.S. in biology from St. Lawrence University.