Dr. Tom Turpen is Founder and CEO of Sensit Ventures. Tom has a passion for connecting innovation to societal needs for the benefit of people and planet. He is an Advisor with the Food System 6 organization, a Member of the Sustainability Council of the 2Blades Foundation and a Principal Consultant with Technology Innovation Group. He volunteers his time and expertise to various UC Davis programs and affiliated companies. Tom is a serial entrepreneur and founder of both for-profit and non-profit organizations including Eliance Biotechnology – acquired by MacroGenics (MGNX), and the Citrus Research Development Foundation. Dr. Turpen has published numerous scientific articles and book chapters, and has been issued patents in four different technology areas. His synthetic biology research contributed to the understanding and design of disease resistance traits in agriculture and helped pioneer the use of plant biomass for industrial biotechnology applications including self-assembling nanoparticles, vaccines and pharmaceuticals at Zoecon Research Institute (Sandoz Crop Protection), Biosource and Large Scale Biology. He is a registered patent agent and is skilled at mapping intellectual property, competitive landscapes, research portfolios and markets. Tom has served as a director of early stage life science companies and as an appointed volunteer in several institutional and civic advisory committees. He was elected a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science in 2017. He received his Ph.D. in Plant Pathology from the University of California at Riverside. Currently with Sensit, he is leading an effort to commercialize an amazing sniffer widget, a MEMS-based ion mobility spectrometer the size of a coin.