Aquaculture Innovation Europe

John Coast Sullenger

Amy Novogratz

Co-founder and Managing Partner of Aqua-Spark, a pioneer investment fund for sustainable aquaculture. Aqua-Spark is a global investment fund with a mission to transform the global aquaculture industry into one that is healthier, more sustainable and more accessible. They invest in aquaculture companies across the value chain, from farming operations to alternative feed ingredients, disease battling, technology, all the way to consumer facing aquaculture products. These companies are solving some of the industry’s big challenges while bringing returns that are comparable to today’s traditional industry. The portfolio works as an ecosystem, with the companies agreeing to collaborate on optimal solutions, and working together toward this shared vision of a more efficient global aquaculture industry.

Prior to Aqua-Spark Amy served as director of the TED Conference’s annual TED Prize for almost a decade, leading more than twenty global collaborations across a broad spectrum of sectors, including healthcare, education, science, technology, conservation, art, and activism. With TED, her list of notable projects include: Sylvia Earle’s Mission Blue, Jamie Oliver’s Food revolution, JR’s Inside Out Project, and Bono’s One.org among others. Amy met her partner/ co-founder through ocean conservation work connected to Sylvia Earle’s Mission Blue. With Aqua-Spark Amy serves on the boards of Love the Wild, eFishery, and Xpert Sea and Energaia. 

Yorán Meijers

Yorán is an Analyst at Anterra Capital. He is primarily responsible for deal sourcing and execution with a focus on digital technologies. He is also involved in portfolio management.

Prior to joining Anterra, Yorán was active as a researcher in the Creative Machines Lab at Columbia University, focused on developing novel cooking techniques for 3D food printing applications. Before that, he has worked at the process technology department at Heinz and the product and process development department at Cargill.

Yorán holds a MSc in Sustainable Food Process Engineering and a BSc in Food Technology from Wageningen University with a BSc minor in Food Business and Management from UC Davis.

Ian Thompson

Matthias Hofer

Matthias Hofer is the Managing Partner at Stonehaven Consulting AG with over 15 years of experience in Animal Health. He served on the executive committees of two major Animal Health companies for a total of 7 years. Between 2009 and 2013 he led the global Aqua Health business at Novartis Animal Health (NAH). Later on, he was Global Leader Emerging Business at Elanco and a member of Elanco’s global executive committee. During 2014 and with Elanco’s intention to buy NAH, Matthias served as overall pre-merger integration leader on the Novartis side. In that role, Matthias led a large team and efforts to prepare integration pre-closing overall including carve-out preparations of operations linked to Novartis.

Chris Beattie

Chris Beattie leads MSD Animal Health’s Precision Aquaculture Team, working closely with colleagues in MSD’s Animal Health Venture Group (AHV). MSD Animal Health Ventures partners with companies and invests in bringing new solutions to address unmet customer needs, including advanced digital technologies.

Formerly Global Head of Aquaculture Business for MSD Animal Health, Chris has a background in Marine Biology and a Ph.D. in Fish Physiology from the University of St. Andrews, Scotland where he worked in conjunction with the Institute of Marine Research, Norway. Prior to joining MSD Animal Health, Chris worked in several technical and commercial roles with Skretting in Europe and North America, latterly as General Manager of Skretting North America.

Christian Rangen

Christian Rangen is a serial entrepreneur, strategy advisor and early-stage investor.

He works with startups, scale-ups and large corporates to help build better business models and new growth companies.

Chris is the founder of X2 Labs – a startup factory, one of the most ambitious accelerator programs in the Nordics. X2 Labs is a venture builder, building entirely new startups around the industries of the future. Recent programs include “Smart City”, “Digital Tourism”, “Ocean Space” and “Aquaculture of Tomorrow”. In his various roles, he has helped fund, build or scale close to 100 startups over the past 10 years. Currently, he is chairman, board member and hands-on advisor to 15+ startups, several in aquaculture and seafood.

He is also a strategy & transformation advisor to global firms, with clients in Malaysia, Sri Lanka, Brazil, Dubai and Europe.
Chris is also senior faculty at BI- Norwegian Business School, management author, keynote speaker and avid kitesurfer.

He resides in Norway, but travels globally for projects, clients and investment opportunities.

Jason Cleaversmith

Jason Cleaversmith is now an Independent Aquaculture Expert. He joined the Scottish Aquaculture Innovation Centre (SAIC) in April 2015 with a mandate to help transform the relationship between Industry and Academia, whilst concurrently facilitating economic growth for the Aquaculture Sector.

Prior to joining SAIC he was the Head of the Novartis Aqua Health presence on Prince Edward Island, Canada where he oversaw 4 facilities, 125 staff and both R&D and Manufacturing related activities. Before joining Novartis, Dr. Cleaversmith led the Bioscience portfolio on behalf of the Province of Prince Edward Island and was responsible for the growth and economic development of the cluster by way of both inward investment and existing company growth.

His career spans time in Blue Chip organizations through to frontline SME positions in roles such as Business Development Director and Head of Operations. In addition, he was a member of the Executive at the Scottish Association for Marine Science and ledfrom inception the development of their commercial subsidiary and technology / knowledge transfer activities, including the building and population of the European Centre for Marine Biotechnology. Subsequently he has worked within the marine biotechnology sector, focusing on natural product discovery for the nutri-, cosme- and pharmaceutical sectors.

He is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Biology, Chartered Manager and is a member of the Institute of Directors. Prior voluntary positions include chair of the board for the University of Prince Edward Islands technology transfer office (Synapse), Vice Chair of the PEI BioAlliance and participated on the steering committee for the biotechnology program at Holland College.

Jason is a graduate of Edinburgh University, Scotland, with a major in Geology followed by a PhD in Marine Geochemistry and has subsequently completed an Executive MBA with the University of Glasgow, where he gained a Distinction.

Richard Sibbit

As Managing Director at DBT, we deliver web, mobile, digital, data management & business intelligence solutions across the global Animal Health and Agricultural supply chain. We provide our customers with a blend of technology, knowledge and talent to solve their business problems. 
As a part of Proagrica, we deliver Precision Animal Health and Precision Agriculture solutions providing our customers with data insight, traceability, correlation and predictive analysis. 

I work with our varying customer base on strategic growth and planning where technology is an enabler for streamlining and improving processes and enabling business growth and ROI. We offer our customers solutions where integration of key technology and solutions adds value to the business and customer experience, delivers successful services and enables consistent and consolidated communications.

My experience covers integration and EDI solutions, business strategy, business planning and sales of varying solutions that cover eSolutions, web sites, business management solutions, strategic partnership solutions (rebate, loyalty, promotions) and data management and BI solutions. I spend a lot of time with our customers delivering and planning a solution foundation. This focuses on developing strategic roadmaps and business plans to deliver a growing and innovative technology platform enabling revenue growth and operational cost savings. In turn this allows standardization of business applications and services to be deployed regionally and globally within our customers organizations.

Neil Wendover

Neil’s passion revolves around the science of aquaculture & it's place in the biz world & together the social & financial impact this can have. Within that space he enjoys strategy, innovation & leadership. Neil has held various strategic, marketing and business development positions across the aquaculture value chain from seafood production through aquatic veterinary health, feed and nutrition and is now the Aquaculture Product Line Dir. for Cargill Digital Insights. Neil has lived & worked in key aquaculture economies across Asia, Europe, Africa & the Americas.

Mr. Gerard Chia

Gerard heads the fund's business development efforts and is part of the deal sourcing and investment team of VisVires New Protein (VVNP), a Singapore-based Venture Fund focused on innovative solutions to the acute inefficiencies of the food and feed industry. They look for disruptive technologies to improve the interaction between food and health, solutions to tackle food waste, food safety & traceability, and to address the unsustainability of the protein production system.

Most recently, Gerard was the right-hand to the former Chairman of the holding co. of the Firmenich Group, where he was Head of Special Projects investing across multiple asset classes. Previously, he was an Investment Analyst with Saratoga Capital, an Indonesia-focused private equity fund.

Tony Chen

Larry Feinberg

Larry Feinberg, PhD. is an entrepreneurial industrial biotechnologist and the CEO and co-founder of KnipBio. He has expertise in early-stage technology ventures, bio-product discovery and large-scale commercialization initiatives. With the advanced biofuel technology firm Mascoma Corporation, Larry held leadership responsibilities in scientific discovery and business development roles. Spearheading the Organism Discovery group, Larry oversaw bioprospecting and strain development duties. Leading the New Business Opportunities team, he was responsible for multiple commercial candidates including the development of the cellulosic ethanol biorefinery initiative in Alberta, Canada which he directed from concept through advanced engineering. In total, Larry co-authored and received greater than $80MM of Canadian government investment through three separate awards.

Larry’s technical training occurred at the University of Massachusetts where he obtained his PhD through his studies of the biogeochemistry, physiology and genetics of hyperthermophile microbes living in extreme environments. Some of the ecologies he has sampled include approximately 20 different hot springs, landfills, agricultural compost piles and industrial facilities.  Prior to his graduate training, Larry ran a small family business for 5 years and was a high school teacher before that.

Mihir Pershad

Geoff Smart

Jamie Stein