Narayanan Narayanan Email & Phone Number

Saint Louis, MO

• Improved crop yield against virus resistance caused by Bemisia tabaci and reduce malnutrition in Africa by enhancing nutritious food
• Developed biotech cassava products by leading a team of 12 scientists in assay development, gene editing, molecular characterizations
• Developed nutritionally significant cassava under multi-location confined field trials in Africa for children under 5 and women of reproductive age
• Implemented “Cassava tracker” software collaboration with the digital IT team for 80-100 internal and external stakeholders to integrate the R&D pipeline
• Managed all aspects of research project deliverables including communication, cost, schedule, scope, and changes
• Collaboration with various International institutes including Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, International Institute of Tropical Agriculture (Kenya), Kenya Agricultural and Livestock Research Organization (KALRO).

St. Louis

St. Louis

• Led the $5M product development program for cassava as an advanced biofuel
• Managed and coordinated trait integration programs for biotech and breeding (Hawaii)
• Partnered across functions and developed program strategies, ensuring that product development and trait strategies are aligned with commercial/business objectives
• Cassava accessions (n1000) planted and shipped to Hawaii following regulatory compliance
• On-time and within budget, delivering solutions with the highest level of customer satisfaction to a diverse set of stakeholders

involved in the BioCassava Plus project aimed at increasing the content and bioavailability of iron, zinc in cassava tubers, to decrease the cyanogen content in cassava tubers and demonstrate its resistance in the field.

Increase the content and bioavailability of iron and zinc in cassava tubers, and to decrease the cyanogen content in cassava tubers

Nutritional genomics project in rice and musk melon - To identify the rate-limiting step that control how much Fe or Zn move to seeds and understand whole plant physiology.

To understand the molecular mechanisms that determines the recognition and signal transduction events in the soybean-Phytophthora sojae (Root rot pathogen) interaction. Research on soybean expressed sequence tags (ESTs) library from pathogen infected tissues and identified unique genes such as transcription factors which can be overexpressed in transgenic.

IRRI, Philippines

Molecular breeding for development of two transgenic rice lines against blast and bacterial blight diseases.

Ph.D, Botany

M. Phil, Botany

M.S, Plant Sciences

B.S, Botany

Education record