DTL’s partner TU Delft can add a new name to its list of professorships: Keygene’s Roeland van Ham recently became a part-time professor computational biology at the technical university. With this special chair TU Delft’s Data science initiative and Keygene aim to change the field in plant genomics research. Since KeyGene is a pioneering company in plant research using a.o. plant genomics that generate huge amounts of complex data, the new position of Roeland van Ham at TU Delft create favourable circumstances to convert ‘big data’ into knowledge and knowledge into useful applications for society.
“At KeyGene our primary focus is turning knowledge into practical applications and innovative products for the seed, agro and food industry”, states van Ham. “We sometimes need to stop when questions get too fundamental. Delft University will provide great opportunities to venture further in that direction and benefit from the environment with ample expertise in technologies. At the same time, in KeyGene we have much plant biology data and knowledge that relate directly to real-life problems in crop improvement. These will provide opportunities for novel research directions in Delft, novel applications for bioinformatics techniques.”