SynBioBeta Speaker
Lyle Ralston
Bayer Crop Science
CE Platform Lead
Dr. Lyle Ralston is the Crop Efficiency Platform Lead in Plant Biotechnology R&D at Bayer Crop Science. Lyle has spent much of his 20+ year career focused on delivering innovative solutions for farmers, translating cutting edge biology into practical solutions for food security and sustainable agriculture. Lyle is focused on developing crops that are more resilient to the impacts of extreme weather events induced by climate change and that are more productive under sustainable management systems. He’s currently affiliated with Bayer’s cross-functional Crop Genome Editing initiative where he’s leading efforts to develop a scalable, efficient, and durable editing pipeline that will deliver edit-enhanced commercial germplasm in the coming decade. Prior to joining Plant Biotechnology R&D, Lyle held diverse positions in Regulatory in both the United States and Brazil, including regulatory science, regulatory affairs, and product stewardship. This end to end experience, from early R&D product development through global regulatory submissions and product stewardship, gives him a holistic view of what it takes to bring innovative, genome edited products to market responsibly and at scale. Before joining industry, Lyle was a USDA postdoctoral fellow at the Donald Danforth Plant Science Center in St. Louis, MO, where he worked on foundational research in plant biochemistry and deepened his commitment to improving the human condition through plant science. He holds a PhD in Plant Biology from the University of Kentucky and a BS in Biology from Gannon University.
SynBioBeta 2026 Tickets are Live
Confirmed Speakers
Sessions Featuring
Lyle
This Year
•
-
Planetary Health
Rooted in Resilience: Speeding Up SynBio Plant Adaptation in a Rapidly Changing Climate
Climate volatility is reshaping the future of food, demanding plants that can withstand heat, drought, and disease. Synthetic biology offers powerful tools to accelerate adaptation—engineering plants with traits that once took decades to breed. This session explores how innovators are designing resilient plants, building platforms for rapid trait development, and forging collaborations across agtech, biotech, multinationals, and policy. Join us to hear how synbio is moving beyond the lab to the field, reshaping agriculture for resilience, and ensuring farmers worldwide can thrive in the face of climate uncertainty.
Purchase Pass
Featuring
Joshua Geilhufe
Rhiza Bio Cons.
Principal
First-market strategist for synbio agriculture and fermentation.
Lyle Ralston
Bayer Crop Science
CE Platform Lead
Engineering Crops for global food security
Joshua Armstrong
Corteva
IDD/BP Leader
Emily Hatas
Revive & Restore
Vice President
Bruce Schnicker
Pivot Bio
VP, Product Dev
Sowing the seeds for Biology's future
Michael Ferrari
Moby
VP, Head of Research
Data/AI “world-models” researcher bridging synbio to real markets.
•
-
Planetary Health
Rooted in Resilience: Speeding Up SynBio Plant Adaptation in a Rapidly Changing Climate
Climate volatility is reshaping the future of food, demanding plants that can withstand heat, drought, and disease. Synthetic biology offers powerful tools to accelerate adaptation—engineering plants with traits that once took decades to breed. This session explores how innovators are designing resilient plants, building platforms for rapid trait development, and forging collaborations across agtech, biotech, multinationals, and policy. Join us to hear how synbio is moving beyond the lab to the field, reshaping agriculture for resilience, and ensuring farmers worldwide can thrive in the face of climate uncertainty.
Purchase Pass
Featuring
Joshua Geilhufe
Rhiza Bio Cons.
Principal
First-market strategist for synbio agriculture and fermentation.
Lyle Ralston
Bayer Crop Science
CE Platform Lead
Engineering Crops for global food security
Joshua Armstrong
Corteva
IDD/BP Leader
Emily Hatas
Revive & Restore
Vice President
Bruce Schnicker
Pivot Bio
VP, Product Dev
Sowing the seeds for Biology's future
Michael Ferrari
Moby
VP, Head of Research
Data/AI “world-models” researcher bridging synbio to real markets.
Session lineup still growing
Purchase Pass
Featuring
Speaker Coming Soon
•
-
Human Health
From Cells to Patients: Solving the Scale Mismatch in Virtual Biology
Drug discovery often measures biology at the cell level while interventions work at the tissue, organ, or whole-patient scale. This mismatch can make accurate cell-level predictions irrelevant in the clinic. This session dives into strategies to bridge that gap: multiscale modeling that nests single-cell dynamics within organ-level simulations, spatial transcriptomics that preserve context, and surrogate models that translate cell-level outputs into clinical biomarkers. Speakers will ask: how do we ensure virtual biology reflects not just what cells do in isolation, but how biology behaves in the real complexity of patients?
Purchase Pass
Featuring
Speaker Coming Soon
