UC Davis - Mars Symposium - An exploration of scientific discovery, innovation and collaboration in food, agriculture and health
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UC Davis – Mars Symposium An exploration of scientific discovery, innovation and collaboration in food, agriculture and health Wednesday, January 14, 2015 9.00 am – 5.30 pm Barbara K. and W. Turrentine Jackson Hall Robert and Margrit Mondavi Center for the Performing Arts UC Davis Campus
Linda P.B. Katehi, Chancellor, UC Davis
Harold H. Schmitz, Chief Science Officer, Mars, Incorporated
T here is a growing awareness and understanding of the profound
impact that the global food and agriculture system has on
several key sustainability areas – from climate change and loss of
biodiversity to food security and public health. We believe that to
make true progress on these issues, we will have to partner across
sectors to drive and scale transformational innovation.
For more than four decades, UC Davis and Mars, Incorporated
have partnered on innovative research covering agricultural,
biological, food, veterinary and nutrition science. In September we
announced that we would be taking this partnership to the next
level by establishing a new institute designed to deliver big-impact,
Silicon Valley-type breakthroughs in food, agriculture and health.
Mars pledged $40 million toward the project over the next decade,
matched with $20 million by UC Davis, to facilitate the design and
development of the Innovation Institute for Food and Health, which
will become the innovation arm of the UC Davis World Food Center.
Today’s symposium marks the launch of the Innovation Institute for
Food and Health, and, more broadly, our joint approach to developing
an inclusive environment that attracts a variety of partners and fuels
uncommon collaborations that address the food, agriculture and health
“grand challenges” faced by industry and global society. We therefore
hope that today’s talks, lectures and panels stimulate meaningful
discussions on scientific discovery and an atmosphere of collaboration
that continues way beyond the symposium.
In that spirit of global partnerships committed to solving
societal grand challenges, we are very pleased to host this event
2in collaboration with the Lindau Nobel Laureate Meetings. The
Lindau Meetings in Germany have been bringing young scientists
together with Nobel Laureates since 1951 for a week of unique,
multi-generational dialogue based on the mission to “educate,
inspire and connect.” As part of our collaboration with the Lindau
Nobel Laureate Meetings, UC Davis is hosting the first and only
planned showing of the “Sketches of Science: Photo Sessions with
Nobel Laureates” exhibition in the United States. The exhibition –
celebrating the joy of scientific discovery – is in the Mondavi Center
for the Performing Arts throughout the month of January, and we
encourage you to visit it.
Linda P.B. Katehi and Harold H. Schmitz
3Agenda
Wednesday, January 14, 2015: UC Davis – Mars Symposium
9.00 am – 9.05 am: Welcome by co-emcees – Harold H. Schmitz (Chief
Science Officer, Mars, Incorporated) and Heather Young
(Associate Vice Chancellor for Nursing; Dean, Betty Irene
Moore School of Nursing, UC Davis)
9.05 am – 9.40 am: Welcome addresses
Linda P.B. Katehi (Chancellor, UC Davis)
Pamela Mars (Technology Committee Chair,
Mars, Incorporated)
Countess Bettina Bernadotte (President,
Lindau Nobel Laureate Meetings)
Dan Wolk (Mayor, City of Davis)
Mary Delany (Associate Dean, College of
Agricultural and Environmental Sciences, UC Davis)
9.40 am – 10.10 am: Keynote address – “Searching for solutions to the
grand challenges in health”
Elizabeth Blackburn (Nobel Laureate, Physiology or
Medicine; Professor, UC San Francisco)
10.10 am – 10.40 am: Address – “Innovation: A View from the Classics”
Ralph Hexter (Provost and Executive Vice Chancellor,
UC Davis)
10.40 am – 11.00 am: Break
11.00 am – 12.15 pm: Panel discussion – “Scientific discovery and innovation:
What can the future look like at the nexus of food,
agriculture and health?”
Moderator: William Clark (Professor of International
Science, Harvard Kennedy School)
Jeff Gordon (Professor, Washington University School
of Medicine, St. Louis)
4Angela Glover Blackwell (Founder and CEO, PolicyLink)
Leslie Greene Bowman (President, Thomas Jefferson
Foundation)
Lisa Goldberg (Director of Research, Center for Risk
Management Research, UC Berkeley; Director of Research,
Aperio Group)
12.15 pm – 1.00 pm: Lunch
1.00 pm – 1.30 pm: Innovation Institute for Food and Health ceremony –
Linda P.B. Katehi (Chancellor, UC Davis) and Harold H.
Schmitz (Chief Science Officer, Mars, Incorporated)
1.30 pm – 2.00 pm: Presentation – African Orphan Crops Consortium,
An Uncommon Collaboration
Howard-Yana Shapiro (Chief Agricultural Officer,
Mars, Incorporated)
Allen Van Deynze (Director of Research, Seed
Biotechnology Center, UC Davis)
2.00 pm – 3.00 pm: Panel discussion – “Solving agriculture’s greatest
challenges”
Moderator: William Clark (Professor of International
Science, Harvard Kennedy School)
Howard-Yana Shapiro (Chief Agricultural Officer,
Mars, Incorporated)
Benjamin D. Santer (Climate researcher, Lawrence
Livermore National Laboratory)
Alan S. Rudolph (Vice President for Research, Colorado
State University)
Jason Clay (Senior Vice President of Food & Markets,
World Wildlife Fund)
53.00 pm – 3.30 pm: Break
3.30 pm – 4.30 pm: Panel discussion – “The role Venture Capital can play in
driving innovation clusters and solving grand challenges
at the nexus of food, agriculture and health”
Moderator: William Clark (Professor of International
Science, Harvard Kennedy School)
Geoffrey Smith (Managing Director, Mars Grand
Challenges Ventures, Mars, Incorporated)
Jagdeep Singh Bachher (CIO, UC Board of Regents)
Holden Thorp (Provost and Professor of Chemistry and
Medicine, Washington University in St Louis)
Carl Schramm (University Professor, Syracuse University)
4.30 pm – 4.50 pm: Moderator’s summary and wrap-up of the panel
discussions – William Clark (Professor of International
Science, Harvard Kennedy School)
4.50 pm – 5.20 pm: Ceremony – Appointment of Howard-Yana Shapiro
(Chief Agricultural Officer, Mars, Incorporated) as a Mars
Advanced Research Institute Fellow
Harold H. Schmitz (Chief Science Officer, Mars,
Incorporated)
Alan Bennett (Distinguished Professor, Plant Sciences,
UC Davis)
Stephen Badger (Mars, Incorporated)
Ralph Jerome (Vice President, Corporate Innovation,
Mars, Incorporated)
5.20 pm – 5.30 pm: Closing comments by co-emcees – Harold H. Schmitz
(Chief Science Officer, Mars, Incorporated) and
Heather Young (Associate Vice Chancellor for Nursing;
Dean, Betty Irene Moore School of Nursing, UC Davis)
5.30 pm: Reception
A live stream of the event is available here:
https://new.livestream.com/accounts/11451219/events/3680232
6Participant biographies
Jagdeep Singh Bachher
CIO, UC Board of Regents
Jagdeep Singh Bachher is responsible for managing
the pension, endowment, short-term, and total-return
investment pools for the University of California
and a Visiting Scholar in the Global Projects Center,
Stanford University. Before joining the UC system,
Jagdeep Singh Bachher was executive vice president of
venture and innovation for one of Canada’s largest and
most diversified investment fund managers — Alberta
Investment Management Corp (AIMCo). He also served
as the corporation’s deputy chief investment officer and
chief operating officer. Jagdeep Singh Bachher has been a
champion for change in the investment business and has
gained an international reputation as an innovator.
Countess Bettina Bernadotte
President, Lindau Nobel Laureate Meetings
Countess Bettina Bernadotte is president of the Council
for the Lindau Nobel Laureate Meetings and member
of the Board of the Foundation Lindau Nobel Laureate
Meetings at Lake Constance. She has been a member of
the Council since 2005.
The Lindau Nobel Laureate Meetings are an
internationally recognized annual gathering held in
Germany where, since 1951, young scientists have been
meeting with Nobel laureates for a week of informal
exchange. Countess Bettina Bernadotte assumed
leadership of the family tourism business, Mainau
GmbH in 2007, with the goal of leading the family
business into a sustainable future by adhering to the
European Environmental Management system and by
fostering the use of energy from regenerative sources. Yet
another important issue for Countess Bettina is Mainau’s
continuous pursuit to maintain the values outlined in the
“Grüne Charta” (Green Charter), which promotes respect
for nature and its preservation.
7Elizabeth Blackburn
Nobel Laureate, Medicine; Professor, UC San Francisco
Elizabeth H. Blackburn is a Nobel Laureate in Medicine and
Morris Herzstein Professor in Biology and Physiology in
the Department of Biochemistry and Biophysics at UC San
Francisco. Dr. Blackburn is a leader in the area of telomere
and telomerase research. She discovered that telomeres
(the ends of eukaryotic chromosomes) serve as caps to
protect genetic information and the ribonucleoprotein
enzyme, telomerase. Blackburn and her research team are
working with various cells including human cells, with the
goal of understanding telomerase and telomere biology.
Blackburn is currently a faculty member in Department of
Biochemistry and Biophysics at UCSF. She is also a Non-
Resident Fellow of the Salk Institute.
Angela Glover Blackwell
Founder and CEO, PolicyLink
Angela Glover Blackwell, Founder and Chief Executive
Officer, started PolicyLink in 1999 and continues to drive
its mission of advancing economic and social equity. Under
Angela’s leadership, PolicyLink has become a leading voice
in the movement to use public policy to improve access and
opportunity for all low-income people and communities
of color, particularly in the areas of health, housing,
transportation, education, and infrastructure. Prior to
founding PolicyLink, Angela served as senior vice president
at the Rockefeller Foundation. A lawyer by training, she
gained national recognition as founder of the Oakland (CA)
Urban Strategies Council. From 1977 to 1987, Angela was
a partner at Public Advocates. Angela is the co-author of
Uncommon Common Ground: Race and America’s Future
(W.W. Norton & Co., 2010). In 2013, Angela and PolicyLink
collaborated with the Center for American Progress to write
and release All In Nation: An America that Works for All.
Angela serves on numerous boards, including the Children’s
Defense Fund and The President’s Advisory Commission
on Educational Excellence for African Americans.
8Leslie Greene Bowman
President, Thomas Jefferson Foundation
Leslie Greene Bowman is President of the Thomas
Jefferson Foundation, Inc., which owns and operates
Monticello, the home of Thomas Jefferson. Prior to
coming to Monticello, she served nine years as executive
director of Winterthur, the nation’s greatest museum of
American decorative arts. She spent the first half of her
career as a curator at the Los Angeles County Museum of
Art, where she rose to become head curator of decorative
arts as well as assistant director of exhibition programs.
While in Los Angeles, she also enjoyed academic
appointments with both USC and UCLA, where she
taught American decorative arts history. She has recently
been appointed by President Obama to the Committee
for the Preservation of the White House, on which she
previously served under Presidents Clinton and Bush
from 1993-2010. Leslie Greene Bowman is currently a
Trustee on the Board of the National Trust for Historic
Preservation.
William Clark
Professor, Harvard University
William Clark is the Harvey Brooks Professor of
International Science, Public Policy and Human
Development at Harvard University’s John F. Kennedy
School of Government as well as the Co-Director of the
Sustainability Science Program at Harvard. William Clark’s
research focuses on sustainability science: understanding
the interactions of human and environmental systems
with a view towards advancing the goals of sustainable
development. He is particularly interested in how
institutional arrangements affect the linkage between
knowledge and action in the sustainability arena. He is
co-author and author of numerous texts and publications
and serves on the editorial board of the Proceedings of the
National Academy of Science. William Clark is a member
of the National Academy of Sciences and a Fellow of the
American Association for the Advancement of Science.
9Jason Clay
Senior Vice President, Food & Markets,
World Wildlife Fund
Jason Clay leads the work of WWF-US on agriculture,
aquaculture, business and industry, finance, fisheries, and
forests. Over the course of his career, he has worked on a
family farm and in the US Department of Agriculture. He
has taught at Harvard and Yale and spent more than 25
years with human rights and environmental organizations.
In 1988, Dr. Clay invented Rainforest Marketing, one of
the first fair-trade ecolabels in the United States, and was
responsible for co-creating Rainforest Crunch and more
than 200 other products with combined sales of $100
million. From 1999-2003, he co-directed a consortium
with WWF, World Bank, UN Food and Agriculture
Organization, and National Aquaculture Centers of Asia/
Pacific to identify the most significant environmental and
social impacts of shrimp aquaculture and analyze better
management practices that measurably reduce them.
Mary Delany
Associate Dean, College of Agricultural and
Environmental Sciences, UC Davis
Mary Delany, a distinguished avian geneticist, is associate
dean of the College of Agricultural and Environmental
Sciences, University of California, Davis. She was
appointed associate dean in 2009, and served as interim
dean of the college from September 2012 to January 2014.
Mary Delany was raised in New Jersey and received a
bachelor’s degree (1979) in biology from Montclair State
College. Following master’s (1984) and doctoral (1987)
degrees in animal genetics from Cornell University, she
held postdoctoral and research biologist positions at
Cornell. She first joined UC Davis in 1995 with a joint
faculty appointment in the departments of Avian Sciences
and Animal Science (the departments merged in 1997).
She chaired the Department of Animal Science from 2005
to 2009 and was named the John and Joan Fiddyment
Endowed Chair in Agriculture in 2009. Her teaching
10has included courses in animal cytogenetics, avian
development and genetics, and integrated animal biology.
Dean Delany’s overall research program focuses on avian
genome organization and the role of genome sequence
and its specialized architecture in regulating growth,
development and disease.
Lisa R. Goldberg
Director of Research, Center for Risk Management
Research at UC Berkeley
Lisa Goldberg is Director of the Center for Risk
Management Research and Adjunct Professor of Statistics
at UC Berkeley. She is a Founding Partner at Berkeley
Associates LLC and Director of Research at Aperio Group.
Lisa’s research is at the intersection of theory and practice
in financial economics and statistics.
Lisa has been awarded numerous research grants
including an Alfred P. Sloan Fellowship and an NSF
Visiting Professorship for Women. Lisa is listed as an
inventor on five patents; she is the author of more than
forty articles in peer-reviewed journals and a book,
Portfolio Risk Analysis, which was published by Princeton
University Press in 2010. Lisa served as Book Review
Editor for Quantitative Finance, from 2010 to 2014.
She is on the editorial boards of the Financial Analysts
Journal and Journal of Investment Strategies. She is on the
advisory board of the Journal of Investment Management
Conference Series and on the Academic Advisory Board
of the Consortium for Systemic Risk Analytics. She is as
expert judge on the Haas Business School’s Moskowitz
Prize for Socially Responsible Investing.
11Jeff Gordon
Professor, Washington University School of Medicine
in St. Louis
Jeff Gordon joined the Washington University faculty
after completing clinical training in internal medicine
and gastroenterology, and spending three years as a
research associate at the NIH. He was Head of the
Department of Molecular Biology and Pharmacology
from 1991-2004 before becoming Director of a new
interdepartmental Center for Genome Sciences and
Systems Biology. From 1994 to 2003, he also served
as director of the University’s Division of Biology and
Biomedical Sciences, which oversees all PhD and MD/
PhD students in the biological sciences. Jeff Gordon
and his students conduct interdisciplinary studies of
the genomic and metabolic foundations of mutually
beneficial host-microbial relationships in the human
gut. A central focus of his group is the relationship
between our gut microbiomes and nutritional status.
He is a member of the National Academy of Sciences,
the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and the
Institute of Medicine of the National Academies.
Ralph Hexter
Provost and Executive Vice Chancellor, UC Davis
Ralph Hexter is the Provost and Executive Vice Chancellor
and also holds an appointment as Distinguished Professor
of Classics and Comparative Literature at UC Davis. As
provost and executive vice chancellor, he serves as the
number two person in the UC Davis administration,
reporting directly to Chancellor Linda P.B. Katehi and
representing the chancellor in her absence. He is the
campus’s chief academic officer and, in that post, oversees
the work of the deans and serves as the chancellor’s
principal liaison to the Academic Senate. In all of his
leadership positions, Provost Hexter has made it a priority
to foster excellence across the full range of disciplines, and
to promote equal opportunity, diversity, and inclusion for
students, faculty, and staff.
12Linda P.B. Katehi
Chancellor, UC Davis
Linda Katehi is the Chancellor of UC Davis and a
Professor in Electrical and Computer Engineering as
well as in Women and Gender Studies. As chief executive
officer, she oversees all aspects of the university’s teaching,
research and public service missions, including the
UC Davis Health System and its acute-care teaching
hospital in Sacramento, one of the nation’s leading medical
schools, a new school of nursing and a multi-specialty
physician group that serves 33 counties and six million
residents. In June 2013, Chancellor Katehi established
the UC Davis World Food Center. Taking advantage of
the University’s global preeminence in agriculture and
sustainability, the Center aims to tackle some of the most
critical issues facing our world today, including how to
feed and nourish a growing planet in an environmentally
friendly way.
Pamela Mars
Chair, Technology Committee, Mars, Incorporated
Pamela Mars is currently on the Board of Directors
for Mars, Incorporated. She is a fourth-generation
member of the Mars family working in the business
founded by her great-grandfather, Frank C. Mars, in 1911.
Pamela Mars graduated from Vassar College and began
her career with Ted Bates Advertising as an Account
Executive. She started working for the family business
as an Operations Supervisor at the corporation’s
Hackettstown, NJ plant in 1986. Pamela Mars has held
various positions in the corporation’s Confectionery and
Petcare divisions, working her way up to managerial
and director roles in the Supply and Commercial sectors
of the corporation, including an overseas assignment
as Operations and Manufacturing Director in Mars’
confectionery business in Ballarat, Australia. Prior to her
current role, she was Vice President of Manufacturing at
Mars’ Petcare division in Vernon, California.
13Pamela Mars is currently Chairman of the Board
for Banfield/MMI, a veterinary services arm of the
Mars family businesses, and of the Mars Technology
Committee. She also serves as family ambassador to both
Wrigley and Royal Canin, a pet food business within
Mars. Additionally, she is a member of the Board of
Directors of Mars, Incorporated, having previously served
four years as Chairman.
Outside of her business commitments, Pamela Mars is
on the Board of Trustees for Vassar College located in
Poughkeepsie, NY, and is a Member of the Honorary
Senate for Foundation Lindau Nobel prize winners.
She is also on the Board of Johns Hopkins Medicine. In
addition, she serves on the Supervisory Board of SHV, a
Dutch family business, and a member of the International
Council of Advisors for National Geographic.
Alan S. Rudolph
Vice President for Research, Colorado State University
Alan S. Rudolph serves as the vice president for research
at Colorado State University. Alan S. Rudolph is a former
member of the Senior Executive Service, having served
as the Director for Chemical and Biological Technologies
Directorate, Research and Development Enterprise,
Defense Threat Reduction Agency (DTRA), Fort Belvoir,
VA. DTRA safeguards America and its allies from
weapons of mass destruction (WMD) including chemical,
biological, radiological, and nuclear weapons and high-
yield explosives (CBRNE) by providing capabilities to
reduce, eliminate, and counter the threat and mitigate
its effects. Alan S. Rudolph has had an active career in
translating interdisciplinary life sciences into useful
applications for biotechnology development.
14Benjamin D. Santer
Climate researcher, Lawrence Livermore National
Laboratory
Benjamin D. Santer is a climate researcher at Lawrence
Livermore National Laboratory and former researcher at
the University of East Anglia’s Climatic Research Unit. He
specializes mainly in statistical analysis of climate data sets,
and detection/attribution of climate change forcings. He
was the convening Lead Author of Chapter 8 of 1995 IPCC
Working Group I Report, which addressed global warming.
In 1998, Benjamin Santer was awarded a MacArthur
Foundation grant of $270,000 for research supporting the
finding that human activity contributes to global warming.
He has also received the Ernest Orlando Lawrence Award
and a Distinguished Scientist Fellowship from the US
Department of Energy and the Norbert Gerbier/MUMM
award from the World Meteorological Organization. He
ranks number 12 amongst climate scientists in a 2002
assessment of most influential scientists.
Harold H. Schmitz
Chief Science Officer, Mars, Incorporated
A 20-year veteran at Mars, Harold H. Schmitz has been
chief science officer since 2005. His responsibilities include
strategy development, program alignment and quality
control of the company’s multidisciplinary scientific
research programs. He has previously held various
positions within Mars in Scientific and Regulatory Affairs,
Fundamental Research, Analytical and Applied Sciences
and Corporate functions. Harold Schmitz joined the
UC Davis Graduate School of Management community
in August 2013 to focus on business innovation in food/
agriculture as a Senior Scholar in Management, which
recognizes both his success in his career and his scholarly
work, having published more than 50 peer-reviewed
academic publications. In summer 2014, he managed a
Mars-funded project by five UC Davis MBAs to explore
risk management in supply-chain food safety. The students
presented their recommendations to Mars executives in
15September. Most recently, Harold Schmitz was named the
spring 2015 Arthur and Carlyse Ciocca Visiting Professor
of Innovation and Entrepreneurship at the School.
Carl J. Schramm
University Professor, Syracuse University
Carl J. Schramm is an internationally recognized leader in
entrepreneurship, innovation and economic growth. Prior
to becoming University Professor at Syracuse University,
Carl J. Schramm was president of the Ewing Marion
Kauffman Foundation for ten years. Under his leadership,
the Kauffman Foundation grew into a global institution,
becoming the largest private funder of economic research
related to growth and innovation. An entrepreneur
himself, as well as economist and lawyer, Carl J. Schramm
founded and co-founded several companies in the health
care, finance and information technology industries,
including HCIA, Inc., Patient Choice Health Care
and Greenspring Advisors. In 2007, U.S. Secretary of
Commerce Carlos Gutierrez tapped Schramm to chair
the Department of Commerce’s Measuring Innovation
in the 21st Century Economic Advisory Committee.
He has published numerous books on health care,
entrepreneurship and innovation.
Howard-Yana Shapiro
Chief Agricultural Officer, Mars, Incorporated
Howard-Yana Shapiro is the Chief Agricultural Officer at
Mars, Incorporated, Distinguished Fellow at the World
Agroforestry Centre and a Senior Fellow at UC Davis.
Howard-Yana Shapiro has been involved with sustainable
agricultural and agroforestry systems, plant breeding,
molecular biology and genetics for over 40 years and has
released hundreds of cultivars into the public domain. He
led the global effort to sequence, assemble and annotate
the Theobroma cacao (cacao) genome and is part of the
leadership team for the Arachis (peanut) genome global
effort. In September 2011, he announced the formation
of the African Orphan Crops Consortium, set up to
16sequence, assemble and annotate 100 of the key African
food crops in order to breed more nutritious plants as
well as to train senior scientists and technicians on the
methods of marker assisted selection and breeding to
bring new cultivars to the African rural population.
Geoffrey Smith
Managing Director, Mars Grand Challenges Ventures,
Mars, Incorporated
Geoffrey W. Smith is the Managing Director of Mars
Grand Challenges Ventures – Mars, Incorporated’s
recently-launched VC fund focused on investing in new
businesses that address challenges faced by industry and
global society. He was previously the founding Director
of the Mount Sinai Institute of Technology at the Icahn
School of Medicine at Mount Sinai (ISMMS) and also a
Professor in the Department of Population Health Science
and Policy at ISMMS. Geoffrey Smith is a co-founder
of Ascent Biomedical Ventures. He has been an active
founder, manager, and investor in technology-based
companies since 1995. He currently serves on the Board of
Directors of Azevan Pharmaceuticals, Anterios, BackBeat
Medical, Biomerix, Caliber Therapeutics, Coferon,
TargAnox, and Vivasure Medical. Geoffrey Smith is also
a Visiting Scholar at Rockefeller University where he
founded and directs the University’s Science & Economics
Program and is an adjunct faculty member at the RU
Center for Clinical and Translational Science.
Holden Thorp
Provost and Executive Vice Chancellor for Academic
Affairs, Washington University in St. Louis
Holden Thorp became Provost and Executive Vice
Chancellor for Academic Affairs at Washington University
in St. Louis in July 2013 and also holds an endowed
chair in chemistry and medicine. Provost Thorp joined
Washington University after spending three decades
at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. He
served as the Chancellor of UNC from 2008 through
172013. In his research career, Thorp developed technology
for electronic DNA chips and most recently co-founded
Viamet Pharmaceuticals, which is commercializing new
drugs for anti-fungal and prostate cancer indications. He
is currently a member of the National Security Higher
Education Advisory Board, the Board of Trustees of
the National Humanities Center, and recently chaired a
committee for the National Academy of Sciences charged
with establishing and promoting a culture of safety in
academic laboratory research.
Allen Van Deynze
Director of Research, Seed Biotechnology Center,
UC Davis
Allen Van Deynze is the Director of Research at the
Seed Biotechnology Center (SBC) at University of
California, Davis. As part of the SBC mission to serve
as a liaison between public institutions and the seed
industry, Allen Van Deynze is responsible for developing,
coordinating and conducting research and generating
and disseminating scientific and informational content
for the Seed Biotechnology Center educational and
outreach programs. His research focuses on developing
and integrating genomics into plant breeding of California
crops. He is the instructor at the Plant Breeding Academy,
which he co-developed with Dr. Kent Bradford. Allen
Van Deynze is also the scientific co-leader for the African
Orphan Crops Consortium and is the former chairman of
the US Plant Breeding Coordinating Committee.
Dan Wolk
Mayor, City of Davis
Dan Wolk has served on the Davis City Council since
2011 and voters returned him to the Council in 2012 with
more votes than any other candidate in Davis’ history.
As a city Councilmember, he has led efforts to adopt the
surface water project, pushed for greater investment in the
city’s roads and bike paths and explored sustainable energy
initiatives. He is Deputy County Counsel for Solano
18County, handling public finance, public contracting and
water issues. He is also the founder of the Legal Clinic
of Yolo County, a legal services provider for low-income
families. Mayor Wolk grew up in Davis and attended
Davis public schools before attending Stanford University
and receiving his law degree from UC Berkeley’s Boalt
Hall. He lives in Davis with his wife, Jamima, a former
professional triathlete and small business owner, and their
two young daughters, Avery and Layla.
Heather Young
Associate Vice Chancellor for Nursing;
Dean, Betty Irene Moore School of Nursing, UC Davis
Heather M. Young is associate vice chancellor for nursing
and founding dean of the Betty Irene Moore School of
Nursing at UC Davis. She researches healthy aging with
a particular focus on the interface between individuals
and family as well as formal health-care systems. Heather
Young’s research played an instrumental role in shaping
long-term care policies in Washington State and beyond
and she has conducted several longitudinal studies of
family caregiving in the context of cognitive decline. Her
systems research includes medication management and
safety in rural assisted-living settings and hospitals, as well
as the use of technology-enabled care, such as telehealth,
and community-based strategies to promote health. Young
is an investigator with the Initiative for Wireless Health
and Wellness at UC Davis and the Center for Information
Technology Research for the Interest of Society (CITRIS)
and is co-director of the Latino Aging Research Resource
Center. She is the primary investigator for a recently
approved $2.1 million Patient-Centered Outcomes
Research Institute study seeking to improve health for
individuals with diabetes.
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