team

Mr. Amit Noam is the Chief Executive Officer of Lavie Bio. Mr. Noam has extensive experience as a senior executive, particularly in the agriculture and healthcare sectors, leading teams in the development and execution of commercialization strategies, driving long-term growth and value-creation for businesses. Since 2018, Mr. Noam served as Chief Operating Officer of AgriTask, an ag-tech company, leading the company's commercial and operational strategies, as well as successfully supporting multiple fund-raising rounds. He also has previous experience with leading pharma company, Teva Pharmaceuticals, as well as Shaldor, an Israeli consulting firm, and Themis UAV, providing robotics solutions.

Mr. Noam holds an MBA from Tel Aviv University and a BSc in Industrial and Management Engineering from Ben-Gurion University in Beer Sheva, Israel.

Mr. Russ Putland is the EVP Commercial & General Manager USA of Lavie-Bio. Mr. Putland brings more than 30 years of experience within large multinational agriculture companies. Prior to joining Lavie-Bio Mr. Putland held several commercial leadership roles within Cargill, FMC, DuPont and AGDATA.

Mr. Dor Kestecher is the VP of Business Development at Lavie Bio. Previously he served as Head of Insecticides at ADAMA, a leading global Agrochemicals company. Prior to ADAMA, Mr. Kestecher was the R&D Planner for South-East Europe at Syngenta.

Mr. Kestecher holds a Bachelor of Science degree in Plant Science from the Hebrew University and an MBA from the Recanati School of Management at Tel-Aviv University.

Dr. Michael Ionescu is the VP Research of Lavie-Bio. For the last 6 years, Dr. Ionescu has lead the research and optimization activities of novel microbiome-based ag-biological to drive food quality, agriculture productivity and sustainability.

Dr. Ionescu received his PhD degrees from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem in Life Sciences and Environmental Studies, researching stress response mechanisms in enteric bacteria. He had conducted his postdoctoral research at the University of California at Berkeley in phytopathology, studying cell-cell communication systems in plant pathogens with relation to interaction with host plant.

Mr. Amir Bercovitz is leading the development activities at Lavie Bio. Previously, Mr. Bercovitz served as the operations and Formulation manager for Agrogreen (Minrav), later aquired by Bayer, and as formulation manager for Ecogen Il. Since 1990, Mr. Bercovitz has been involved in the development and production of microbial based products, mainly biopesticides based on live microorganisms - including commercially available Bionematicides (BioNem, Flocter, Nortica, Votivo) and Biofungicides (Aspire, AQ-10, Shemer).

Mr. Bercovitz holds an MSc. Degree in Microbiology from the Hebrew university, Jerusalem

Mr. Ofer Haviv holds the position of Evogene’s President and CEO as of late 2004. Prior to that he held the positions of company COO and CFO from 2002 to 2004 and was involved in Evogene’s spin-off from Compugen in 2002. At Compugen, he held the position of Director of Finance and Treasurer of Compugen (NASDAQ: CGEN) for four years, during which time the company completed two private placements and an IPO on NASDAQ

Mr. Haviv holds a B.A. degree in Economics and Accounting from Faculty of Management, Tel Aviv University and is a Certified Public Accountant in Israel.

Mr. Sassi Masliah holds the position of Evogene’s Vice President Corporate Development. Mr. Masliah has held various positions within Evogene since 2011.
Mr. Masliah holds an LL.B. and B.A. in economics from the Tel-Aviv University.

Mr. Frederic Beudot is the Global Portfolio Leader for Biologicals at Corteva Agriscience™. He sets the global strategic vision and provides direction for the portfolio, business and investments in order to accelerate Corteva’s entry into this fast growing market segment. In that capacity, he directs the overall business operations which include: research and development, business development, technology scouting, technical services, product management and strategic relationships.
Mr. Beudot joined DuPont Crop Protection in 1997 and has worked in a variety of sales, marketing, commercial and strategy leadership roles in France, Canada and the USA, as well as led DuPont’s global fungicide business and Corteva’s global nitrogen management business.
Mr. Beudot earned his Master of Science from the Institut National Agronomique de Paris-Grignon in 1995.

Mr. Elad Aharonson is the President of Innovative Ag Solutions at ICL. Prior to joining ICL, Mr. Aharonson served at Elbit Systems in 2004 and held various senior management positions relating to UAS; he served as Executive Vice President and General Manager -for ISTAR Division, from 2015 to 2021. From 2011 to 2015, he served as Executive Vice President and General Manager – for UAS Division. Prior thereto, ,from 2009 to 2011, he also served as Vice President – for UAV Systems. Mr. Aharonson served as an officer in the IDF holding command positions in the Artillery Branch and in the Ground Forces’ UAV unit.
Mr. Aharonson holds a Law Degree (LL.B.) and a BBA from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Israel.

Mr. Thiessen is a senior agriculture executive highly experienced in commercial areas including marketing, sales, and go-to-market with global experience.

Mr. Thiessen previously served as President of Novozymes BioAg Inc, VP of Novozyme, where he was responsible for the all the BioAg business within the Novozymes organization overseeing its global commercial activities.

Mr. Thiessen previously also held managerial positions at Monsanto and at Philom Bios Inc, ag-biologicals company that was acquired by Novozymes, and is currently co-owner of Redekop manufacturing, an agriculture equipment manufacturer.

Mr. Thiessen holds an MBA and a Bachelor of Commerce; Finance/Marketing both from the University of Saskatchewan.

Dr. Hagai Karchi is co-founder of Evogene and served as its CEO from 2002 to 2004. Prior to the spin-off of Evogene from Compugen he was the Co-Head of Compugen's Plant Genomic Division. He has over 15 years experience in the breeding of tomatoes and in molecular genomics research. His scientific achievements include the development of a molecular system for gene discovery and the development of high yielding, high quality greenhouse tomato varieties. Dr. Karchi has lectured widely in the field of plant genomics and has an extensive record of publications and patents.

Dr. Karchi holds B.Sc and M.Sc degrees from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem's Faculty of Agriculture, specializing in gene expression. He holds a Ph.D. from The Weizmann Institute of Science and the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Israel.

Dr. Angela Sessitsch heads the Bioresources Unit of the AIT Austrian Institute of Technology. She studied biochemistry at the University of Technology in Graz, Austria, holds a PhD in Microbiology from the Wageningen University, the Netherlands, and is habilitated at the Vienna University of Natural Resources and Life Sciences. She has pioneered plant-associated microbiomes, particularly in the endosphere, and is interested in understanding the interactions between plants, microbiomes and the environment as well as to develop applications. Her group explores the diversity and functioning of plant microbiota by applying a range of molecular approaches, interaction modes between plants and model bacteria, colonization behaviour of endophytes as well as various application technologies for biocontrol and crop enhancement applications. A. Sessitsch published more than 150 peer-reviewed publications and has a h-index (Web of Science) of 53.

Prof. Naama Barkai is a professor in the departments of Molecular Genetics and Physics of Complex Systems at the Weizmann Institute of Science in Rehovot, Israel and a member of of the European Molecular Biology Organization (EMBO), the European Bioinformatics Institute (EBI), the ERC Starting Grant evaluation panel, the European Molecular Biology Laboratory (EMBL), Academia Europaea, and of the Israel Academy of Sciences and Humanities.
Prof. Naama Barkai received her PhD in Theoretical Physics in 1995 from the Hebrew University where she Graduated Summa Cum Laude in the studies of “Statistical Mechanicsof Learning“. Her Post-Doctoral Fellow at the Physics Department, Princeton University in Princeton, New Jersey focused on Theoretical Study of Biochemical Networks.
Prof. Barkai lab research is focused at the interface between mathematics and biology and understanding the biological constraints that are imposed on a particular system, and the impact of those constraints on the structural design of the network while developing novel solutions for fundamental biological problems such as nutrient homeostasis systems and the organization of the cellular transcription programs.