Daniel Klessig will resign as BTI president, citing health problems

Daniel F. Klessig, president and chief executive of the Boyce Thompson Institute (BTI) for Plant Research Inc. on campus, will resign as soon as a successor is in place.

He informed the institute's board of directors of his decision at a meeting May 7, citing health problems. BTI, an independent organization, is located on campus.

The board expressed its desire that Klessig continue his research work at the institute as a senior scientist with tenure.

"I wish that I were able to finish the work that I began. But I cannot, as a physical matter, handle both my scientific research program and the president's job," Klessig told the board. "As a matter of fairness to BTI, I had to choose one or the other."

Klessig had been associate director of Rutgers University's Waksman Institute before succeeding Charles J. Arntzen as BTI's seventh president on Sept. 1, 2000. During Klessig's tenure as president he oversaw strategic policy changes, substantial reallocation of resources, the recruitment of several outstanding new scientists, major facility improvements, including the transformation of the institute's plant-growth facilities and a dramatic increase in fundraising.

Paul Hatfield, BTI board chair, said, "Dan has worked tirelessly, with unsurpassed dedication to the institute, its people and Cornell University. We are grateful for a job very well done and wish Dan good health in the future."

Klessig's research ranges from studying cancer-causing animal viruses to learning how plants protect themselves against microbial pathogens. His research has been funded by the American Cancer Society, the National Institutes of Health, the National Science Foundation and the U.S. Department of Agriculture.

He was professor of molecular biology and biochemistry at the Waksman from 1985 to 2000. Before joining the Rutgers faculty he was assistant professor (1980-1983) and associate professor (1983-1985) in the Department of Cellular, Viral and Molecular Biology at the University of Utah. From 1979 to 1980 he was a staff scientist at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory, Cold Spring Harbor, N.Y.

Klessig earned his bachelor's degree from the University of Wisconsin at Madison in 1971. As a Marshall Scholar, he earned a B.Sc. with honours in molecular biology from the University of Edinburgh in 1973. He earned his doctorate in biochemistry and molecular biology from Harvard University in 1978 under the direction of Ray Gesteland and James D. Watson, the latter a co-winner of the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 1962 for his discovery with Francis Crick of the double-helical structure of DNA. Klessig has been a Searle scholar (1982-1985) and a McKnight scholar (1983-1986).