Sven Harmsen, PhD joined BASF Venture Capital in January 2012. He started within BASF's crop protection division in January 2006 as the head of global new business development. Before joining BASF SE, Sven was responsible for business development after heading the medicinal chemistry department of a venture capital financed (now publicly listed) biotech company near Munich.

Following a postdoc at Stanford University Sven started his career in R&D at companies like Hoechst Pharma/HMR (today: Sanofi), and AgrEvo/Aventis CropScience (today: Bayer). Sven studied chemistry at the Julius Maximilians University Würzburg and was awarded a doctorate in science.