Dr. Daniel Voytas
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Thursday 3:30-5:00 pm: Overcoming bottlenecks in plant gene editing
Moderated Q&A to follow
Friday 3:00-5:00pm: Gene editing ushers in a new era in plant agriculture
We are excited to continue our successful UNT BioDiscovery Institute Distinguished Lecturer series. For Spring 2022, we have National Academy of Sciences member Dr. Daniel Voytas on campus February 17th and 18th. Dr. Voytas' internationally recognized research focuses on developing cutting-edge methods for precision genome editing in plants. His laboratory developed a powerful genome editing reagent - Transcription Activator-Like Effector Nucleases (TALENs) - which was heralded by Science magazine as one of the top ten scientific breakthroughs of 2012. His lab is currently optimizing methods for efficiently making targeted genome modifications in a variety of plant species to advance basic biology and develop new crop varieties.
Dr. Voytas is a McKnight Presidential Endowed Professor in the Department of Genetics, Cell Biology and Development, and the Director of the Center for Precision Plant Genomics, at the University of Minnesota. His undergraduate studies were at Harvard College and he received his Ph.D. from Harvard Medical School. He conducted postdoctoral research at Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine where he was a fellow of the Life Science Research Foundation. Prior to joining the University of Minnesota in 2008, Dr. Voytas was a professor at Iowa State University. Dr. Voytas co-founded Calyxt, an agricultural biotechnology company that uses gene editing for crop improvement, and he currently serves as Chair of its Science Advisory Board. Dr. Voytas was elected to the National Academy of Sciences in 2019 for his accomplishments in targeted genome editing.