Women in Sustainable Agriculture and Food Biotechnology ― Key Advances and Perspectives on Emerging Topics

This volume describes the contributions made by women scientists to the field of agricultural biotechnology, the most quickly adopted agricultural practice ever adopted. It features the perspectives of women educators, researchers and key stakeholders towards the development, implementation and acceptance of this modern technology. It describes the multiplying contemporary challenges in the field, how women are overcoming technological barriers, and their thoughts on what the future may hold. As sustainable agricultural practices increasingly represent a key option in the drive towards building a greener global community, the scientific, technological and implementation issues covered in this book are vital information for anyone working in environmental engineering.

Laura Privalle has worked in the agricultural biotechnology industry since 1984 after receiving her Ph.D. in Biochemistry at the University of Wisconsin. Her dissertation was on nitrogen fixation in blue-green algae. After a post-doctoral fellowship at Duke University where she worked on nitrite reductase, she joined CIBA-GEIGY’s brand new biotechnology unit. This subsequently became Novartis and then Syngenta. She has been working in Regulatory Science since 1992 and was deeply involved in producing the safety assessment package for the first transgenic maize product that received regulatory approval in the United States. In 2003 she joined BASF as head of Regulatory Science where she remained until 2013 when she joined Bayer CropScience. She has served as vice-chair and then chair of the Protein Allergenicity Technical Committee for the Health and Environmental Science Institute. She also serves on the Education Enhancement Grants panel for the North Carolina Biotechnology Center. In addition, she is a member of the Faculty of 1000 in the Agriculture and Biotechnology Section.