Dr. Chris Holly's practice focuses upon helping clients in the agriculture, food, microbiology and biotechnology industries create and leverage robust IP portfolios. He has a vast experience in helping startup companies in the human and agricultural microbiome sector carve out valuable space in this emerging IP landscape.

Chris has counseled clients in a range of technical areas, including: novel agricultural active compounds, herbicidal and insecticidal compositions, antimicrobial compounds, biotechnology assays, and the transformation of microbial organisms for the production of compounds of interest.

Prior to joining Cooley, he was an associate at Baker, Donelson, Bearman, Caldwell & Berkowitz in that firm's DC office.

Chris obtained a PhD in Biological Sciences from Mississippi State University with research funded by the US Department of Agriculture and focused upon microbial and plant community dynamics in agricultural systems. By utilizing molecular techniques to characterize the microbial communities present in the agricultural systems and landscape scale data to characterize the plant communities inhabiting the systems, Chris' research resulted in significant insights that led to the publication of several peer reviewed scientific articles. During his last year of graduate research, Chris was selected as the top PhD research associate at Mississippi State University.

Chris maintains an active interest in academic agricultural technology issues, by frequently serving as an expert scientific reviewer for several leading weed science and agricultural technology journals.

While attending the University of Mississippi School of Law, Chris served as an editor for the Mississippi Law Journal, was a Dean's Leadership Council member, and won first place in an appellate oral advocacy competition. While attending Millsaps College, his undergraduate research focused upon utilizing electron microscopy to characterize oil absorbing polymer composites and the effects that biotic factors, bacterial species, had on the composites.