Dr. K. K. Narayanan is the Managing Director of Metahelix Life Sciences, a Tata enterprise. Metahelix is based in Bangalore, India, and is focused on crop improvement, using all the modern tools of plant genetic manipulation.Narayanan is trained as a plant breeder and molecular biologist. He graduated with a Ph.d. in plant breeding and genetics from the Tamil Nadu Agricultural University at Coimbatore, India. He later on carried out post-doctoral research at the department of biological sciences, Stanford University under a Rockefeller Foundation fellowship.Returning to India, he started his career as a scientist at the Spic Science Foundation, Chennai and later moved on to lead the crop transformation and functional genomics programme at the Monsanto Research Centre located within the Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore. In 2001, he along with four other scientist colleagues founded Metahelix Life Sciences and has since been leading its operations.Narayanan is a member of several committees and advisory bodies including several scientific task forces on “agricultural biotechnology”of the DBT, Government of India, and the “Vision Group” on Biotechnology set up by the Karnataka government.