Timothy Kelliher
Roberts and Mikhail Distinguished Chair in Plant Genome Editing and Professor, Departments of Entomology and Plant Pathology and Horticultural Science
2316 Plant Sciences Building
tjkellih@ncsu.eduBio
As director of NC State’s Genome Editing Center for Sustainable Agriculture, Kelliher focuses on genome editing in crops to create novel agronomic and disease resistance traits, new CRISPR tools, and novel crop reproductive systems. He has a background in haploid induction, genome doubling, plant developmental biology, and confocal microscopy. He also collaborates with both academic and industry partners to drive intellectual property generation in the field of genome editing for crops, microbes and insects.
Early center goals include developing new plant genome editing tools to shorten the timespan between scientific exploration and introduction of plant improvement innovations to farmers and growers.
Before joining NC State’s faculty in July 2025, Kelliher spent 12 years at Syngenta Seeds Research, leading programs related to breeding technologies and genome editing trait development, most recently as head of trait technologies and genome editing traits.
Kelliher holds a bachelor’s degree in biology from Swarthmore College and a Ph.D. in biology studying plant reproduction from Stanford University.