Mai Komatsu

Mai Komatsu is part of the Corteva R&D group responsible to identify and prioritize collaboration, investment and acquisition opportunities with private and public providers of emerging and adjacent technologies. Mai facilitates the establishment, execution and integration of technology evaluation and joint development projects, and is a technology advisor for Corteva’s accelerator and venture capital investments.

As part of the Open Innovation team, Mai serves as Seeds and Digital Ag subject matter expert and follows up proposals that require long-term, joint development collaboration projects, as well as, licenses and strategic R&D alliances.

Mai holds a Ph.D. in Molecular Biology from the Nara Institute of Science and Technology, Japan, and a B.S. in Biological Sciences from the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. She started her career at Corteva Agriscience, then DuPont Pioneer, in 2004 as a post-doctoral scientist. During her 10 years as Trait Discovery Research Scientist, she led projects with several academic and industry collaborators. With a knack for external collaboration facilitation, Mai transitioned to her current role in the Technology Acquisition and Alliance Management group in 2015, and joined the Open Innovation team in 2017.