Beth Lorsbach

Biography

  By 2050, world food production must support an estimated 9 billion people — all while using the same amount of land and conserving water. This imminent global challenge is top of mind every day for Beth Lorsbach, Ph.D., process chemistry leader for Dow AgroSciences. Lorsbach, an expert in synthetic organic chemistry, says that creating novel solutions to real-world agriculture challenges is a stimulating job that never gets old. Throughout her career, she’s helped advance new compounds that help with crop protection, with a focus on fungicides. In particular, she and her team have made great strides recently in the quest for new fungicides to control Septoria tritici, a devastating wheat pathogen that’s of great concern to the cereal market. Lorsbach has helped to advance a novel area of chemistry, aminopyrimidines, which is highly active against this commercially important disease. “But what I’m most passionate about is certainly the people,” says Lorsbach, who takes her job as a mentor just as seriously as her job as a scientist. “We deal with really tough problems that not anyone can solve. You need to have a collaborative environment so you can bounce ideas off of each other—that’s the secret sauce. With the right people, the sky is really the limit.” Lorsbach is among 10 scientists nationally to be recognized in 2015 by the American Chemical Society with a Women Chemists Committee (WCC) Rising Star Award. The award recognizes outstanding women scientists approaching mid-level careers who have demonstrated outstanding contributions to their respective fields.  (Read more about the recognition.) “At the end of the day, you have to love what you do,” says Lorsbach, who received a bachelor’s degree in chemistry from Boston University and a Ph.D. in organic chemistry from the University of California, Davis. “You must be passionate about it.” Luckily for Dow AgroSciences—which add hundreds of talented scientists to its ranks every year—Lorsbach’s passion for her work is contagious.

Research Interest