San Diego, California
September 24, 2007
Cibus LLC, the privately held San Diego-based trait
development company, has named Peter Beetham, Ph.D., senior vice
president of research. The announcement was made by Cibus
President Keith Walker.
Beetham previously served as vice president at Cibus. Prior to
joining Cibus, Dr. Beetham was research director of the Plant
and Industrial Products Division at ValiGen, formerly Kimeragen,
Inc. He has spent more than two decades in agricultural
research, with direct experience in areas including plant
biotechnology and the more applied applications involved in the
introduction of improved root crops to many countries in
Southeast Asia and the South Pacific.
“Peter is an integral part of the Cibus team,” said Cibus
President Keith Walker. “His expertise and research is a
cornerstone of our success with the RTDS™ technology.”
Dr. Beetham was employed by the Victorian Department of
Agriculture and Rural Affairs (DARA) in Australia from 1985 to
1992. He served as a scientific officer based at the Plant
Research Institute (PRI), working with research groups
throughout Southeast Asia and the South Pacific.
As part of the plant virology group at Queensland University of
Technology (QUT), he worked on the molecular biology of banana
bunch top virus (BBTV) and the development of pathogen-derived
resistance. He continued his research as a postdoctoral
scientist at the Boyce Thompson Institute at Cornell University,
where he was one of the pioneers of the early work that led to
the Cibus LLC Rapid Trait Development System (RTDS™) technology.
Dr. Beetham received his Ph.D. in Plant Molecular Virology from
QUT in Brisbane, Australia and is a BSc (Hons) graduate of
Monash University, Melbourne, Australia.
Cibus LLC is a privately held San Diego-based trait
development company. Cibus produces environmentally friendly
crop traits for the agricultural community that do not carry the
market-resistance or regulatory burden of attributes engineered
through the introduction of foreign genetic material. The
Company accomplishes this through the application of a new and
proprietary technology called the Rapid Trait Development System
(RTDS™), which has proven itself in the laboratory with several
different crops, and in initial field trials of Cibus’ first
commercial crop. |
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