Born in California,  Richard graduated from the College of Creative Studies of the University of California.   He received his PhD in Molecular, Cellular & Developmental Biology at the University of Colorado, followed by an NIH fellowship in Cambridge where he conducted the world's first field release of a transgenic food crop, and created and distributed amongst the most widely cited and licensed enabling technologies in the life sciences. After working with the FAO of the United Nations as Senior Molecular Biologist he founded Cambia in Canberra, Australia in 1991. 

Cambia is an autonomous international non-profit social enterprise that creates new strategies and tools to bring efficiency and equity to life-sciences enabled innovation.   For almost two decades Cambia has been inventing, distributing and supporting new enabling biotechnologies for use in systems-based agriculture and life sciences worldwide, which are now used in thousands of labs around the world.   Increasingly Richard's research has focused on the microbial populations as part of the hologenome and his hologenome theory of evolution that informs systems-based strategy for agriculture, environment and health interventions.    

Cambia developed the BiOS Initiative (www.bios.net) - the biological open source movement in response to increasing science and technology complexity, patent thickets and innovation system inefficiencies. The BiOS Initiative created the first patent-based commons mechanism for science-enabled innovation.    Cambia has continued to be the trendsetter in new thinking about patents, collaboraton and public good.  As part of this work, Cambia created the Patent Lens, (www.patentlens.net), now the pre-eminent independent public, global open access resource for increasing patent transparency, which has formed the basis for the new CambiaLens platform for innovation cartography.

Richard has worked and taught extensively worldwide, supporting the Rockefeller Foundation's biotechnology network for over a decade, and has been an advisor to many UN Agencies and the CGIAR.   He has been profiled in media including The Economist, Newsweek, Nature Biotechnology, Science, New Scientist, Wired, and Red Herring.   Cambia's work has recently featured in cover editorials in many major life sciences journals.

In 2003 Richard was named by Scientific American to the List of the World's 50 most influential technologists, cited as the World Research Leader for 2003 for Economic Development. In 2005 Richard was awarded the Leadership in Science: Public Service Award by the American Society of Plant Biologists. For the last decade Richard has been an Outstanding Social Entrepreneur of the Schwab Foundation, for which he is a regular panelist at the Davos meetings of the World Economic Forum.   In 2009, with funding from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, Richard became Professor of Science, Technology & Law at the Queensland University of Technology, and Founding Director of the Initiative for Open Innovation (IOI).   In 2010 he was awarded the inaugural CSPO Prize Medal by the Consortium for Science, Policy and Outcomes (CSPO).

View full Curriculum Vitae (info).

Carol holds a Ph.D. in Genetics from Stanford University and a J.D. magna cum laude from University of Puget Sound (now Seattle University) School of Law. She was a biomedical scientist in the academic world for many years before earning her law degree. Her legal focus is patents and their strategic integration with business goals. In private law practice, she often counselled clients on freedom to operate issues and saw the need for more pragmatic learning tools about patents.  Carol was the Director of Intellectual Property and Chief Legal Officer for Cambia until 2004 and oversaw the creation of the Cambia IP Resource. She has now returned to private practice (www.cougarlaw.com) and is retained as a consultant for Cambia.

Tim joined Cambia in June as a Senior Software Engineer. He graduated from the Queensland University of Technology (QUT) and has been working on a successful travel holiday website for the past few years. He has a good and broad understanding of web technologies - from complex back-end systems right through to user interface design and development.

Deniz hails from Heidelberg in Germany.  He recently joined Cambia as an Analyst Programmer. Previous roles in Australia and Germany have given him extensive experience in systems engineering, software development and applied bioinformatics in both academic and commercial environments. He holds a double degree in Computer Science and Bioinformatics from the University of Bonn, Germany with a strong focus on distributed computing and bioinformatics.

Ben is experienced in managing and delivering complex, network based, distributed systems using Agile development methodologies. He likes to stay current with the latest ideas surrounding software development and contribute to furthering the art and science ofhis  profession for the benefit of all.