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Pairwise Raises $90 Million to Bring New Varieties of Fruits and Vegetables to Market
February 3, 2021 GMT
DURHAM, N.C. (BUSINESS WIRE) Feb 3, 2021
Pairwise announced the closing of its $90 million Series B funding round, signaling a new frontier in healthy, sustainable food innovation. Funding for the round was led by Pontifax Global Food and Agriculture Technology Fund (Pontifax AgTech), a pioneering growth capital investor in food and agriculture technology, and existing investor Deerfield Management Company (Deerfield), an investment firm dedicated to advancing healthcare through investment, information and philanthropy. Also joining the Series B round are new investor Temasek, an investment company headquartered in Singapore, and existing investor Leaps by Bayer, which invests in paradigm-shifting advances in the life sciences sector, including agriculture and health.
Reopening of Boston colleges threatens escalation of COVID-19 crisis
In the state of Massachusetts the average number of daily COVID-19 cases is trending near 5,000. Not a single day has passed since November in which new daily case numbers have been below those seen during the highest peaks of the first April surge.
Despite the harrowing state of the pandemic in the state and throughout the country, colleges and universities in Boston and the surrounding area are pushing to reopen schools for in-person learning in the 2021 semester. The impact of college reopenings will have a devastating impact on the region. In particular, Boston comprises 10 percent of the state’s total population and more than a third of the state’s total college enrollment.
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Four MIT scientists are among the 20 recipients of the 2021 Academy Honors for major contributions to science, the National Academy of Sciences (NAS) announced at its annual meeting. The individuals are recognized for their “extraordinary scientific achievements in a wide range of fields spanning the physical, biological, social, and medical sciences.”
The awards recognize: Pablo Jarillo-Herrero, for contributions to the fields of nanoscience and nanotechnology through his discovery of correlated insulator behavior and unconventional superconductivity in magic-angle graphene superlattices; Aviv Regev, for using interdisciplinary information or techniques to solve a contemporary challenge; Susan Solomon, for contributions to understanding and communicating the causes of ozone depletion and climate change; and Feng Zhang, for pioneering achievements developing CRISPR tools with the potential to diagnose and treat disease.