Manuel Sainz Manuel B. Sainz was born in Havana, Cuba. At an early age, he immigrated with his family first to the U.S., then to Brazil. Educated in American schools in Brazil, he moved to the U.S. to follow a lifelong interest in agriculture, graduating with a B.S. in Vegetable Crops from Cornell University in 1975. Following his graduation and marriage, Manuel farmed for several years, settling and raising a family in Oregon. He established Nature's Bounty Farm, specializing in direct marketing of fresh plums and dried prunes to retailers. Recognizing that molecular biology would fundamentally change agriculture, he returned to school, getting a B.S. and Ph.D (1997) in Biology from the University of Oregon. His thesis research on the regulation of the maize anthocyanin pathway was conducted in the laboratory of Dr. Vicki Chandler. Manuel did a post-doc in Brian Staskawicz's lab at UC Berkeley, where he identified genes involved disease resistance signal transduction in Arabidopsis. Manuel joined Syngenta Biotechnology, Inc (SBI) in 2000, where he has held positions of increasing responsibility. He is currently leader of the Transformation and Greenhouse Logistics group at SBI, responsible for event production and greenhouse operations, including event efficacy, initial crosses and transgenic seed production.