Vipula Shukla

Senior Program Officer of Agriculture, The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation

Seattle

Dr. Vipula "Vi" Shukla joined the Bill & Melinda Gates foundation, Agricultural Development team in September 2012 as a Sr. Program Officer for Discovery Research. She currently leads the Discovery investment portfolio linking upstream, breakthrough science to application in agriculture for smallholder farmers. Prior to joining the foundation, Vi spent more than a decade at Dow AgroSciences, where she helped establish and build their biotechnology research division and led numerous research programs that delivered novel genes, traits and pioneering genome-editing technology for crops. She also held roles in technology investment, licensing and commercialization, collaboration and IP portfolio management. Vi is an inventor on numerous patents and her research has been published in high-profile scientific journals such as Science and Nature.

Vi has served the plant biology/agriculture community in a variety of ways as a board member, mentor, advisor and advocate for basic and translational research. She holds a B.S. in Biology from Carnegie-Mellon University, a Ph.D. in Plant Biology from Washington University in St. Louis, and completed postdoctoral work at UCSD and the Salk Institute for Biological Sciences. Throughout her career, Vi has championed the idea that science and technology have the power to change people’s lives for the better.