Ron Heddleson leads the New Foods & Protein Technical Services group at Novonesis in North America, where his team helps customers apply enzymes and microbial cultures across plant-based beverages and meats, protein ingredients, full-life nutrition products and animal coproducts including pet food.

His 30-year career in the food and biotechnology industries has spanned an unusually wide range of categories — biopharmaceuticals, dairy, bakery, ready-to-eat cereals, oils, and alternative proteins — in product development and technical service leadership roles at GalaGen, General Mills, QualiTech, Calyxt, and Novonesis. At Calyxt, he directed the technical services efforts behind Calyno™ high-oleic soybean oil, the first gene-edited food product commercialized in the U.S.

Ron holds a B.S. in Microbiology and an M.S. in Food Science from Penn State University, and a Ph.D. in Food Science from North Carolina State University, where his research focused on dairy chemistry. He serves on NC State's Food, Bioprocessing and Nutrition Sciences Industry Partners Advisory Council and supports efforts with the Bezos Center for Sustainable Protein, UGA-Griffin’s FPIC and NC-FIL.