Research Triangle Park, NC, USA
December 15, 2022
AgBiome is delighted to announce Ben Holt as Vice President for Innovation.
At AgBiome, we continuously pursue in-house product development and external partnerships. Both are essential to the development, growth and core mission of our company. Our research platform, which includes our diverse microbial isolate and genomic sequence collections, screening programs, and seasoned technical experts, has always been available for collaborative partnerships. We’ve leveraged our platform in exciting and creative ways with industry leaders, such as Mosaic, Genective, Elanco and ElevateBio.
Today, we are thrilled to introduce Ben as AgBiome’s VP for Innovation. In this new role, Ben will be responsible for developing innovative partnership opportunities that leverage AgBiome’s world class technical platform, as well as working with partners to develop synergistic, win-win relationships that generate shared value.
Ben joined the company in 2019 as an R&D Leader, where he led the Core Program (Microbiology, Data Science, and Data Management) and worked with a dedicated group of excellent leaders to develop AgBiome's Research Leadership Team.
Ben enters this role with over 20 years of experience in plant biology, microbiology and R&D. Prior to joining AgBiome, Ben was a professor of plant biology at the University of Oklahoma and a program officer at the National Science Foundation, where he led the plant, fungal and microbial development program. His broad research career has spanned studies of fish movement through hydroelectric facilities, crop productivity in small scale farming, signaling mechanisms in plant defense responses, transcriptional control of flowering time and the development of synthetic biology systems. He is also the recipient of an NSF CAREER Award (2012) and the Kinney-Sugg Outstanding Professor Award from the Dodge Family College of Arts and Sciences, University of Oklahoma (2017).
Ben holds an M.S. in plant biology from Ohio University and a Ph.D. in molecular biology from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
“The most exciting element of this position is the honor of representing our amazing scientists and leadership teams in innovative new business partnerships. I’ve watched our dedicated team work with business partners to solve some really challenging problems, so I start this new role with a deep feeling of confidence,” Ben said.
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