Ulanch to Develop Biotech Crops
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| Paul Ulanch |
Veteran business development specialist Paul Ulanch, Ph.D., M.B.A., has joined the North Carolina Biotechnology Center’s AgBiotech Group as Biotechnology Crops Development Director.
Ulanch, director of Technology Commercialization Services with the North Carolina Small Business and Technology Development Center (SBTDC) since 2008, also held faculty and administrative responsibilities for several years with the Department of Molecular Genetics and Biochemistry at the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine.
Ulanch’s expertise spans both animal and crop biotechnology systems.
As an independent consultant for the University of North Carolina System, the Biotechnology Center and other economic development organizations, Ulanch conducted a study to inventory the state’s marine science technology and evaluate its commercial potential. The process led the Biotechnology Center to fund the establishment of a Center of Innovation in Marine Biotechnology earlier this year.
“Paul brings valuable perspective and experience to our statewide ag biotech initiative,” said Gwyn Riddick, M.B.A., the Biotechnology Center’s vice president of Agricultural Biotechnology. “He’ll be a key contributor to the Biotech Center's initiative using biotech statewide to boost the ag economy from the current $74 billion to more than $100 billion by 2020.”
"North Carolina is a global leader in agricultural biotechnology, in fields and forests as well as in its world-class academic research institutions and multinational corporations’ greenhouses and labs," Ulanch said. "I’m excited to be part of an enterprise with such wide-ranging and significant promise, both for economic prosperity within the state and for feeding an increasingly hungry world.”
Ulanch received a Bachelor of Science degree in biology from Michigan Technological University and a Ph.D. in biochemistry from Texas A&M. He also earned an executive M.B.A. from the Katz Graduate School of Business at the University of Pittsburgh.
About nine of every 10 North Carolina farms are classified as family farms, and some three-quarters of those are considered small family farms. Biotechnology offers opportunities for them to grow new kinds of high-value specialty crops, and new uses for existing crops, that can allow these farmers and their families to comfortably remain on the farm while also reducing their use of costly crop-protection chemicals, fuel and time.
Incorporating the tools of biotechnology into agricultural practices across the state can also produce higher yields for more income and lower costs for both family farmers and for agribusinesses.