Lotte Westerhof, PhD, is a plant biotechnologist with 18 years of experience in the field. Almost eight years ago, she traded academia for industry and joined Hudson River Biotechnology (then a small start-up with big ambitions) as employee number two. Today, she serves as Chief Scientific Officer, helping shape HRB into a company known for tackling one of the toughest challenges in commercial application of plant science: democratising CRISPR technology for plant breeding.

Lotte grew up in a small town in the north of the Netherlands, curious to see what lay beyond it. She studied Biotechnology in Leeuwarden, choosing plants when most of her classmates preferred the medicinal track. That curiosity led her to Wageningen, where she completed her MSc and later her PhD on production of recombinant proteins in plants, work that resulted in several peer-reviewed papers and two patents.

Although she was offered an academic career, she found herself wanting more teamwork and a stronger link between discovery and application. Hudson River offered exactly that. Over the years she has helped develop what is now known as the BioMaas workflow for CRISPR-mediated plant breeding and continues to steer both science and strategy at the company.

She brings a mix of pragmatism and playfulness to her work; grounded in science, open to surprise, and happiest when collaboration sparks something new.