Fernando Reinach

Until recently, Dr. Fernando Reinach was a general partner of Votorantim Ventures, a venture capital fund of the Votorantim Group, one of Brazil's largest private conglomerates with revenues of US$8 billion. He also serves as a board member of Amyris. He is one of the founders of CanaVialis, the world's largest breeder of sugarcane (acquired by Monsanto in 2008), as well as Alellyx (also acquired by Monsanto in 2008), now the world's largest sugarcane biotechnology company. In 1990, he co-founded Genomic Engenharia Molecular, one of the first Brazilian companies to perform DNA and paternity tests and one of the country's largest DNA testing companies. Reinach organized and was a coordinator of the Brazilian Genome project, an initiative by a number of institutions aimed at sequencing the genomes of Xylella fastidiosa and Xanthomonas citri bacteria. He graduated with a degree in biology from the University of São Paulo (USP) and has a Ph.D. in cellular and molecular biology from Cornell University.