Participants
Rob Horsch

Rob Horsch
Senior Program Officer, Global Development Program
Gates Foundation
Seattle, USA

Dr. Rob Horsch joined the Bill & Melinda Foundation as a Senior Program Officer in the Agricultural Development program in Nov. 2006.  Rob was previously employed by Monsanto where he served most recently as Vice President of Product and Technology Cooperation with responsibility to help small-holder farmers in developing countries gain access to better agricultural products and technologies.

Rob is a leader the effort to create agricultural technologies that help improve yields and incomes for farmers around the world.  He  joined Monsanto in 1981 and led the company's plant tissue culture and transformation efforts until 1995. In that capacity, he contributed to the development of the Bollgard, Yieldgard, and Roundup Ready traits in broad use today and directed an expanding research group to apply genetic transformation technology to many important crops, including potato, tomato, cotton, soybean, corn and wheat.  He also has been a leader in trying to develop technologies specifically for low-income countries and farmers.  He has launched programs to transfer and apply this technology to developing country applications, train and help educate scientists around the world, and communicate the science, benefits, and risks of agricultural biotechnology in the context of global sustainability and sustainable development.

Rob has served on the editorial boards of several leading journals in the plant sciences and as an advisor to the National Science Foundation and the Department of Energy. In 1999, he was awarded the 1998 National Medal of Technology by President Clinton for contributions to the development of agricultural biotechnology.  Rob received his Ph.D. in Genetics at the University of California, Riverside, in 1979, and then conducted postdoctoral work in plant physiology at the University of Saskatchewan.