Yield10 Bioscience Announces Two New Hires as Camelina Business Plan Advances
—Dr. Munyikwa Appointed as Director of Regulatory Affairs—
—Dr. Renegar Appointed as Director, Business Analytics and Operations—
WOBURN, Mass., June 29, 2021 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) — Yield10 Bioscience, Inc. (Nasdaq:YTEN), an agricultural bioscience company, today announced two new hires. Tichafa Munyikwa, Ph.D. has been appointed Director of Regulatory Affairs. In this new role, Dr. Munyikwa will be responsible for developing and executing regulatory strategy for Yield10’s performance and content traits deployed in Camelina. In addition, Nicholas Renegar, Ph.D. has been appointed Director, Business Analytics and Operations. In this new role, Dr. Renegar will be responsible for business analytics and project management as well as supporting Yield10’s business development, supply chain development, and seed operations activities.
“We are delighted to have Tichafa join the Yield10 team as we are scaling up seed production and intensifying our efforts to develop and commercialize performance traits as well as novel traits to produce nutritional oils, meal and PHA bioplastics on our Camelina platform,” said Oliver Peoples, Ph.D., President and Chief Executive Officer of Yield10. “Tichafa’s experience in major agricultural companies as well as with startups provides him with a unique perspective on developing new crops and products for the agricultural sector. We are confident he will make important contributions and provide our team with invaluable strategic insights and guidance on achieving regulatory approval to enable commercialization of our agbiotech crops and products.”
“Nick brings to this role a strong background in food safety and global supply chain analytics, areas we will be focused on as we advance Yield10’s Camelina business plan,” said Dr. Peoples. “We are delighted to welcome Nick to Yield10 and look forward to his contributions as he will serve as an important asset to the team as we expand our seed scale up across Canada, the U.S. and South America and as we intensify our commercial and business development activities.”
Dr. Munyikwa possesses 25 years’ experience working in the agriculture sector in a career spanning crop research and development, global regulatory affairs and management as well as successfully obtaining regulatory approval for several genetically modified crops. From 2018 to 2021, he was Vice President, Global Regulatory Affairs for Trait Biosciences and Pebble Labs. From 2008 to 2018, Dr. Munyikwa held various positions at Syngenta Company in regulatory affairs and trait R&D, most recently as Global Regulatory Affairs Lead for New Technologies and Early Phase Research Projects (2014-2018) and Chair, Plant Breeding Innovations Team, Genome Editing (2013 to 2018). From 1998 to 2007, Dr. Munyikwa was at Monsanto Company (now Bayer) where he joined as a post-doc and became a Senior Research Scientist in the Biotechnology Program in 1999. At Monsanto he was named an inventor on six issued patents and focused on experimental and commercialization strategies for RNAi (gene silencing) technology and mechanisms of plant disease resistance.
In his professional experience, Dr. Munyikwa has been a board member for the International Enzyme Technical Association, North Carolina State University Genetic Engineering & Society Institute, and the Association of African Agricultural Professionals in Diaspora (AAAPD). Dr. Munyikwa earned a Ph.D. at Wageningen University, The Netherlands. He earned an M.S. in Biotechnology – Molecular Biology, Fermentation Technology and a B.S. in Biological Sciences Microbiology, Parasitology, Invertebrate Zoology from the University of Zimbabwe.
Dr. Renegar recently earned a Ph.D. in Operations Research from the MIT Sloan School of Management, Cambridge, MA, where he was advised by Professor Retsef Levi. While pursuing his Ph.D., Dr. Renegar was a member of MIT’s Operations Research Center, and MIT’s Food Supply Chain Analytics and Sensing (FSAS) Initiative. He has conducted and published research in food safety, including supply chain analytics, big data and optimization, with a focus on international supply chains and China. His Doctoral Thesis is entitled “Predictive Analytics and Machine Learning for the Risk-Based Management of Agricultural Supply Chains”. Dr. Renegar has also worked on auction theory and online algorithms, including a research internship at Google, Inc. focused on mechanism design for search ads. Prior to MIT, from 2010 to 2015, Dr. Renegar worked as a Healthcare Consulting Actuarial Analyst at Milliman, Inc. where he utilized predictive analytics to help healthcare organizations plan for the future. Dr. Renegar earned a B.A. in Mathematics and a B.S. in Operations Research at Cornell University.
About Yield10 Bioscience
Yield10 Bioscience, Inc. is an agricultural bioscience company that is using its differentiated trait gene discovery platform, the “Trait Factory”, to develop improved Camelina varieties to produce proprietary seed products, and to discover high value genetic traits for the agriculture and food industries. Our goals are to efficiently establish a high value seed products business based on developing superior varieties of Camelina to produce feedstock oils, nutritional oils, and PHA bioplastics, and to license our yield traits to major seed companies for commercialization in major row crops, including corn, soybean and canola. Yield10 is headquartered in Woburn, MA and has an Oilseeds Center of Excellence in Saskatoon, Canada.
For more information about the company, please visit www.yield10bio.com, or follow the Company on Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn.
(YTEN-G)
Safe Harbor for Forward-Looking Statements
This press release contains forward-looking statements which are made pursuant to the safe harbor provisions of Section 27A of the Securities Act of 1933, as amended, and Section 21E of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934, as amended. The forward-looking statements in this release do not constitute guarantees of future performance. Investors are cautioned that statements in this press release which are not strictly historical, including, without limitation, that Dr. Munyikwa will make important contributions and provide Yield10 with invaluable strategic insights and guidance on achieving regulatory approval to enable commercialization of the Company’s agbiotech crops and products, and that Dr. Renegar will serve as an important asset to Yield10 as the Company expands its seed scale up across Canada, the U.S. and South America and as the Company intensifies its commercial and business development activities, constitute forward-looking statements. Such forward-looking statements are subject to a number of risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially from those anticipated, including the risks and uncertainties detailed in Yield10 Bioscience’s filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission. Yield10 assumes no obligation to update any forward-looking information contained in this press release or with respect to the matters described herein.
Contacts:
Yield10 Bioscience:
Lynne H. Brum, (617) 682-4693, LBrum@yield10bio.com
Investor Relations:
Bret Shapiro, (561) 479-8566, brets@coreir.com
Managing Director, CORE IR
Media Inquiries:
Eric Fischgrund, eric@fischtankpr.com
FischTank PR
