Ag Pioneer Named Life Sciences Champion
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As a subscriber you can listen to articles at work, in the car, or while you work out. Subscribe NowAn Indiana life sciences leader focused on feeding a growing global population is the winner of the 2016 Watanabe Life Sciences Champion of the Year Award. Sheridan-based JBS United founder John Swisher was honored at the Indiana Life Sciences Summit in Indianapolis. He says continuing advances in agriculture, including high-tech equipment, seed engineering and animal nutrition will be key to addressing the global challenge of how to "feed people without money" in regions including Africa and Asia. JBS United initially focused on swine research and pork production and has developed what it bills as the largest swine nutrition research farm system in the U.S. industry. Over the last 20 years, the company has grown its biotech interests, leading to FDA-approved feed enzymes designed to increase global market share for swine and poultry feeds. Swisher founded JBS United in 1956 as United Feeds. Since then, the company has emerged as a global ag innovation leader, with more than 300 employees working at 17 technology research centers and 18 production scale research facilities in 23 countries. In November, Swisher became chairman emeritus of JBS United. Doug Webel was named president and CEO, marking the first change at the top since the company’s founding more than 50 years earlier.
Previous Watanabe Life Sciences Champion of the Year award winners include:
Leonard Betley, retired Chairman, President and CEO of Richard M. Fairbanks Foundation
Richard DiMarch, Standiford H. Cox Professor of Chemistry and the Linda & Jack Gill Chair in Biomolecular Sciences at Indiana University. Co-founder of Ambrx, Inc., Marcadia Biotech, Calibrium and MB2.
Dane A. Miller, founder of BioMet
Bill Cook, founder of Cook Group
Lilly Endowment under the leadership of Chairman Thomas Lofton
Phillip Low, Ralph C. Corley Distinguished Professor of Chemistry and Director of the Purdue Center for Drug Discovery—Biochemistry
John Lechleiter, Chairman, President and CEO of Eli Lilly and Company