Mark Singleton welcomed as lead for plant health innovation

GreenLight Biosciences, Inc., a biotechnology company focused on RNA research, design and manufacturing for human, animal and plant health, today announced the appointment of Mark Singleton as the company’s Senior Vice President of Technology and External Innovation.

“GreenLight is working to address humanity’s greatest challenges, from producing vaccines to protecting bees,” said Andrey Zarur, CEO of GreenLight. “Mark brings the experience and expertise we need to advance towards our goal of feeding the world’s growing population while protecting the planet.”

Singleton will report to Andrey Zarur and lead on plant health innovations such as GS2, GreenLight’s RNA-based Colorado potato beetle control product.

Founded in 2008, GreenLight has raised $230M to date and is rapidly expanding to new market opportunities in human health, animal health and plant health. Last year, GreenLight raised $100M+ in an oversubscribed series D round to accelerate efforts around a COVID-19 vaccine and messenger RNA manufacturing.

Key investors include Morningside, Baird Capital, Cormorant Asset Management, Fall Line, S2G Ventures, Lupa Systems Capital, Continental Grain Company and Prelude Ventures.

“I’m extremely excited to be joining the team to help Greenlight realize its mission,” Singleton said. “It’s critical for the world to produce more food more sustainably, and GreenLight will help this happen.”

Singleton joins GreenLight from UPL Ltd where he was The Global Head of New Technologies.

Mark worked on UPL’s integration of Arysta, assembled a world class team of scientists, and managed the building of the OpenAg Center in the Research Triangle Park, a 69,000 sq ft multi-functional R&D facility dedicated to the support of VC funded companies bringing their technologies from discovery to the market across all indications and technology platforms.

In this role, Mark became a key player in sourcing and characterising new and disruptive technologies for use in agriculture, using platforms selected from VC funded companies around the world.

During his time with Arysta LifeScience, Mark was appointed as their first ever VP of R&D and Regulatory and oversaw a multi-year program that increased the value of their R&D portfolio five-fold and doubled the contribution of BioSolutions within that portfolio.