Your trusted advisors at Smart Earth Camelina Corp.

Your trusted advisors at Smart Earth Camelina Corp.

Marisol Berti

Dr. Marisol Berti is a professor in the Department of Plant Sciences, North Dakota State University (NDSU). She has a B.S. degree in Agronomy from the Pontificia Universidad Catolica, Chile, and a M.S. and Ph.D. degree in Plant Sciences from NDSU. Her research experience includes forages, cover crops, and bioenergy crops production research. Her work
includes the study of innovative ways to modify cropping systems to provide year-round soil cover to reduce soil erosion, enhance soil health and reduce leaching and runoff of nutrients. Her latest work is focused in novel ways to integrate alfalfa into annual cropping systems to increase
resilience and stability of crop production. In addition, she has 20 years of experience in the introduction and testing of novel oilseed crops, such as camelina. She has secured 8.1 million dollars in extramural funds for her research, but has been part of many other projects for a total of 23 million dollars. She has led large multidisciplinary, multi-institutional USDA-NIFA grants. She is author or-co-author of 90 peer-reviewed publications, 26 proceeding papers, 3 book chapters, numerous extension publications, and over 220 conference and symposia presentations.

Rex Newkirk

Rex Newkirk is the Ministry of Agriculture Endowed Research Chair in Feed Processing Technology at the University of Saskatchewan. His focus is on Ingredient processing to enhance value and feeding value and consistency; processing to increase nutritional value of by-products and the use of novel technologies such as Screw Extruder Steam Explosion to add value to high fibre ingredients in order to remove Anti-nutritional factors through processing.

He served as Vice President, Research and Innovation, Canadian International Grains Institute, Winnipeg, MB, Feb 2013-June 2015; Director of Research and Business Development, Canadian International Grains Institute, Winnipeg, MB, January 2010 – February 2013; Director of Biofuels and Feed, Canadian International Grains Institute, Winnipeg, MB, June 2007 – January 2010 and was Director of Feed, Canadian International Grains Institute, Winnipeg, MB, July 2003 – June 2007.

Rex was the Co-founder of MCN Bio-products. MCN developed a novel process to create canola products for the aquaculture and livestock industries and was purchased by Bunge Global Innovation in 2012.

He received a Ph.D., University of Saskatchewan, 2002, Department of Animal and Poultry Science, Canola Processing.

Larry McNamara

Mr. McNamara has been in the Fats and Oils business since 1969, focusing on soybean and corn products in the United States and canola oilseed products in Canada. Mr. McNamara was President and CEO of Canbra Foods, where oil and meal sales supported a 1,200 MT per day crushing plant. After leaving Canbra in 1998, Mr. McNamara worked with Dow AgroSciences to introduce the specialty canola oilseed, Nexara. He then worked with Ellis Don Corporation to build an expeller pressed oilseed business which was later sold to Viterra Inc.

Kevin Falk

Kevin Falk retired from Agriculture & Agri-Food Canada (AAFC) in 2017 and launched a consultancy business with a focus on plant breeding and genetics of field crops shortly thereafter. Dr. Falk worked as Research Scientist and Project Leader at AAFC – Saskatoon Research Centre from 1992 to 2017. His specialties were canola, industrial oilseed/mustard and camelina breeding. Previous to that he was a canola breeder for Mildola Oy of Helsinki, Finland and Advanta Seeds Inc. Canada (formerly ICI Seeds), Winnipeg, Manitoba (1987 - 1992). Dr. Falk holds a BSc. (Agr.) (1981) and MSc. (Agr.) (1983) from the University of Guelph, and a Ph.D. from the University of Saskatchewan with a major in Plant Breeding (1991). Over the course of his career Dr. Falk has developed, commercialized and/or licensed seven canola, three Ethiopian mustard, and one camelina varietie(s).

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