Elhan Ersoz spent the last decade and a half on developing strategic and innovative solutions to challenging problems bridging agricultural biotechnology and ag-product development.

She received her PhD in Genetics from UC-Davis with David Neale ( co-advised by Chuck Langley) [2001-2005], followed by an extended post-doc at Cornell University [2006-2010] with Ed Buckler at Insitute for Genomic Diversity. By virtue of being at the right place at the right time, Elhan learned first hand the challanges and rewards of immaculate design and execution of large scale genetics and genomics experiments. The insights she gained during her tenure at the Ant Hill, shaped her subsequent career as an out-of-the-box thinker and problem solver. Shortly after, she was recruited to Syngenta, to work as the lead geneticist for Water-optimization lead discovery project.

During her tenure in Syngenta[2010-2016], she mainly contributed to developing maize Agrisure product lines- Artesian and Viptera as well as development of computational solutions for implementation of cutting-edge analytical technologies for ag-product development, for over 30 R&D projects- across various row crops, diverse field crops and vegetables.

For the next challange, Elhan has joined the (then start-up, current VC backed Series-C small company) Benson Hill Biosciences, Data Science and Platform engineering team [2016-2018], as a scientific and technical research lead for development of a computational biology platform, later named CropOS.

After a decade and a half of working as a professional scientist, across big and small organizations, Elhan have discovered that there is indeed such a thing as “unconconcious bias” and the “glass ceiling” - contrary to her prior beliefs.

In 2018 she became an avid supporter of the movements condemning discrimination against women in science, both in academia and industry. She is passionate about empowering diversity and people from all walks of life for careers in science- including but not limited to women and girls.

For her long term research interests, she studies naturally occurring genetic diversity with the objective of learning, understanding and leveraging these learnings to desired end-products for sustainable agriculture solutions.