Marcel van Verk appointed Vice President Crop Data Science of KeyGene

KeyGene, the research company developing and applying technology innovation for crop improvement, has appointed Marcel van Verk as Vice President Crop Data Science. Marcel will lead KeyGene’s Crop Data Science department from April 1^st,  2023. With this appointment, KeyGene aims to further increase its impact in AI and machine learning for plant breeding and to successfully integrate systems biology in modeling complex traits, as a powerful approach to finding genes for new breakthroughs in plant breeding worldwide.

“We are very pleased to have Marcel van Verk assume leadership of KeyGene’s R&D in Data Science and Artificial Intelligence.”, said Roeland van Ham, KeyGene’s appointed CEO from April 1^st,  2023.  “In the past years, Marcel already played an important role in our Data Science department. Amongst other, he successfully led the development of KeyGene’s powerful data integration system “CropPedia”, which is now widely used in our industry. Marcel is a talented leader and he has the vision and the understanding of the needs of our customers to help crop improvement to be driven by data and computational technologies; farther, stronger, and in novel directions.”

“Artificial Intelligence and Data Science, as in other fields, are rapidly becoming drivers of research in the life sciences.” said Marcel van Verk. “At KeyGene, we are turning these into green tools and technologies with which we create impactful innovations for crop improvement for our partner in the agro-food sector.  I am thrilled to have been given the opportunity to lead KeyGene’s data science activities and I’m ready to work with the talented team in our department in utilizing the enormous potential of these rapidly developing technologies.”