Poornima Parameswaran, Ph.DFounder

United States - Orinda, California

Poornima cofounded Trace Genomics. Trace Genomics has developed the first analytics engine that learns as it maps the living soil - innovating at the intersect of soil science, genomics and machine learning to advance agriculture. The company has raised over $35 million in funding, and has operations in both Ames, Iowa and Silicon Valley. Trace Genomics has won several awards including being selected as a 2020 Technology Pioneer by the World Economic Forum, Winner of FoodShot Global's Innovating Soil 3.0 Challenge, Forbes Top 25 Most Innovative AgTech, THRIVE Top 50 AgTech, Agfunder's Most Innovative US startup pre-Series A, and more.

Poornima earned a Ph.D in Microbiology and Immunology from Stanford University with Nobel laureate Dr. Andrew Fire, and a B.S. in Molecular Biology from University of Texas at Austin where she was in the Dean’s Scholars Program.

After completing her Ph.D, she did a postdoctoral fellowship at UC Berkeley’s School of Public Health, and worked closely with the Broad Institute and the Ministry of Health in Nicaragua. She is an author on 12 publications that have been referenced over 1,450 times, where she pioneered the use of genomics technologies to address fundamental questions in microbial diseases.

Poornima was awarded the Career Development Award from the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, the Sidney Raffel award for Outstanding Achievement in Graduate Studies, and the Gabilan Stanford Graduate Fellowship.