Keygene appointed Fayaz Khazi as CEO

The Board of Directors of Keygene Inc. recently announced the appointment of Dr. Fayaz Khazi as Chief Executive Officer effective May 5, 2014.

“Fayaz is a charismatic and dynamic leader and the ideal person to take Keygene Inc. to its next exciting phase of growth in the Americas" said Arjen van Tunen, Chairman of the Board of Directors, and Chief Executive Officer of Keygene N.V., Wageningen, The Netherlands. “In Fayaz we have found a strong leader with an outstanding international experience, a successful track record in the life sciences industry and a passion to lead an Agricultural Biotechnology company and help clients with the development of molecular genetic innovations for crop improvement. We are confident that under Fayaz’s leadership Keygene Inc. will continue with the development of innovative crop improvement research and expand our business in the North and South American continents with emphasis on major American crops such as soybean and corn”.

“With a long-standing legacy of solid science and a history of demonstrated success, Keygene Inc is ideally positioned to leverage its culture of innovation to deliver novel and rapidly deployable technologies to develop solutions that address global food security” Dr. Khazi said. “KeyGene’s integrated and interdisciplinary technology and trait platforms are suited to showcase the power of molecular agriculture; a unique and a much needed intersection of genomics, bioinformatics and crop genetics. I am excited to be a part of this wave of revolution in agriculture” continued Dr. Khazi.

Dr. Khazi holds a Ph.D. degree specializing in Plant Molecular Biology from Auburn University. After completing his PhD, Dr. Khazi trained as a Howard Hughes Medical Institute’s post-doctoral fellow at The Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia and University of Pennsylvania prior to joining Intrexon Corporation, located in Germantown, MD USA in 2007. At Intrexon, a synthetic biology company, Dr. Khazi held various executive leadership positions in science and business management with emphasis on the Food and Agricultural Biotechnology sectors. Dr. Khazi’s last role at Intrexon was Vice President, Business Analytics and Strategy.