Ivan Musingo
MS in Entrepreneurship & Engineering at Notre Dame

What interested you most about joining Field Atlas for the Company Tours cohort this year?
As someone who’s doing engineering and entrepreneurship together, my plan was to see what’s actually going on in Indiana and see what kind of products and services companies are offering and how their business models work. This tour fits directly with what I wanted to learn about in the region and I’m glad I was a part of it. I found that after the tour and visiting the companies, there is a lot going on and anyone can plug into the industry and be able to build a career here.

How was your experience at the networking dinner and what did you learn professionally?
Yesterday we had dinner at Eddie Merlot’s – nice steak, I recommend. We sat next to Ken Isley, partner at Barnes & Thornburg. He was a very interesting guy who has worked for the government before and now works for a law firm. He shared a lot of experience from the beginning of his career when he didn’t know what he wanted, to joining law school, and how he found himself working in agriculture and actually the government side of agriculture as well. Just networking with someone full of life and full of an interesting career was very inspiring for me.

How has the tour shifted your perception of careers in agbioscience?
What shocks me is what’s being done – there are so many things. We visited two companies – one called Beck’s Hybrids and one called Eurofins. I didn’t know that companies like Beck’s, who deals with corn, are doing so much more than growing corn for food like we see on the table. There are so many things actually happening around it. I also didn’t know there’s so much science, business, testing, and labs related to agriculture as well. I was very glad to visit these companies.

What was a fun fact you learned on the tours?
At Eurofins there is something they call lab poop which is literally molasses but it looks like poop. It kind of looks nasty and disgusting but actually smells really nice. It’s like chocolate and milk. Apparently, cattle like sweet things, so they normally add it to cattle feeds so that the cows can enjoy their meals.

What was the most interesting part of the tours?
The most interesting part for me was how massive the operations at Beck’s Hybrids were. Although I’d heard it before, I didn’t know they were that large scale in Indiana and in this area, so I was very fascinated by how much they can produce and what they are doing at their facilities.

How do you potentially see yourself making an impact in agbioscience?
My plan is to mainly be on the side of commercializing the different products that all these companies are developing. My point is to figure out what the client or the people in the agbioscience industry want and need and then see that through development and figuring out how we can best commercialize all of the products they are developing and all of the services like Eurofins does for testing. I’m seeing myself in the space where I’m supporting the commercialization of these different products and innovations that are being made at the different companies that I’ve seen today. That’s how I see myself growing in this career.

Learn more about Agbioscience Company Tours here.