Matt DiLeo is the Divisional Director, Technology Development for the Plant Biology Institute within the Ellison Institute of Technology. Here, Matt leads both the technology platform and operations teams, helping to drive scientific discoveries in plant biology towards commercial impact in food and agriculture. Previously, he led R&D and served on the board of directors at Elo Life Systems, a Series A plant biotechnology startup located in the U.S. In this role, Matt led the development of two product leads (a molecular farmed natural sweetener and a disease resistant gene-edited banana) from concept to field trials in addition to closing $7M in new plant gene editing partnered projects. His team’s work was featured in multiple podcasts and interviews, including Bloomberg and NPR’s Science Friday. Prior to this, Matt was responsible for scientific operations for the plant gene editing team at Precision Biosciences (DTIL) and led the application development team for Novozymes’ joint agricultural microbial product development effort with Monsanto. Matt earned his Ph.D. in Plant Pathology from the University of California, Davis and started his career in plant biotechnology developing computational tools and plant phenotyping assays at Cornell University and KeyGene, Inc.