Pat Schnable is a distinguished professor at Iowa State University where he is the Iowa Corn Endowed Chair and directs the Plant Sciences Institute that is fostering collaborations among plant scientists, engineers and data scientists. He is also the Baker Scholar of Agricultural Entrepreneurship and the lead of Iowa’s Digital & Precision Ag economic development platform. Schnable received a BS in Agronomy from Cornell University and a PhD in Plant Breeding and Cytogenetics from Iowa State University before conducting post-doctoral research in Molecular Genetics at the Max Planck Institute in Köln, Germany.

Schnable’s wide-ranging investigations of the genetics, genomics, and phenomics of maize have resulted in over 230 peer-reviewed publications, an h-index of 87, and over 29,300 citations. He is a fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, co-lead of the Genomes to Fields Initiative, the PI of the Agricultural Genomes to Phenomes Initiative (AG2PI), a past chair of the American Society of Plant Biology’s Science Policy Committee, and a past chair of the Maize Genetics Executive Committee.

Schnable is also a serial ag-tech entrepreneur. For example, he is CEO and co-Founder of Dryland Genetics, a proso millet breeding company. He also serves on the scientific advisory boards of several ag-tech companies.