Dr. Tom Stein is Director, Merck Animal Health Ventures, responsible for leading investments and commercializing technologies for swine health and production. He was Senior Strategic Adviser for Montreal-based Maximus Systems, acquired by Ingersoll-Rand in 2021. He is well-known as the creator of the PigCHAMP software and co-founder and CEO of MetaFarms (2000-2015), a SaaS platform currently tracking over 50 million finishing pigs each day in North America. In 2008, National Hog Farmer magazine named him one of the top 50 men and women who truly made a difference in the US pork industry over the last 100 years. In 2011, the American Association of Swine Veterinarians presented Dr. Stein with the Howard Dunne Award for outstanding contributions to swine production and health. In 2019, Dr. Stein received the George Foxcroft award from the Banff Pork Conference for rigorous and high-profile research which contributes to improvements in pork production efficiency.