Mary E. Maxon, PhD is the Executive Director of BioFutures, an effort focused on maximizing the potential of biotechnology toward a circular bioeconomy.

Previously she was Associate Laboratory Director for Biosciences at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, and before that she was Assistant Director for Biological Research at the Office of Science and Technology Policy where she was the principal author of the Obama’s Administration’s National Bioeconomy Blueprint. Currently, Mary serves as a US State Department-appointed Delegate to the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development’s Biotechnology, Nanotechnology, and Converging Technologies Working Party. She is also a member of the Global Bioeconomy International Advisory Council, a member of the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine’s Standing Committee on Advances and National Security Implications of Transdisciplinary Biotechnology, and a member of the Carnegie Institution for Science Board of Trustees. Mary holds a PhD in Molecular Cell Biology from the University of California at Berkeley, did postdoctoral training in genetics at the University of California, San Francisco, and held multiple positions in biotech and pharma companies.

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