Fusion Farms

Fusion Farms has partnered with Dr. Shane Burgess and his team at the University of Arizona to bring a unique perspective to our business plan. Dr. Shane C. Burgess, MRCVS, FLS has worked around the world as a practicing veterinarian and scientist. His areas of research expertise include cancer biology, virology, proteomics, immunology, bioinformatics, and computational biology. He has 188 refereed publications, trained 38 graduate students and has received nearly $55M in competitive funding since 1997.

A “first-generation student,” Dr. Shane Burgess graduated in 1989 as a veterinarian with distinction from Massey University, New Zealand. He has worked in and managed veterinary clinical practices in Australia and the UK, including horses, farm animals, pets, wild and zoo animals, and emergency medicine and surgery. He did his radiology residency at Murdoch University in Perth, Western Australia, where he concurrently co-founded Perth’s first emergency veterinary clinic. He has managed aquaculture facilities in Scotland. His PhD in virology, immunology and cancer biology from Bristol University medical school was done between 1995 and 1998, while working full time outside of academia.

Dr. Burgess is currently Vice President for Agriculture, Life and Veterinary Sciences, and Cooperative Extension, Charles-Sander Dean of the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences, and Director of the Arizona Experiment Station at the University of Arizona. The division has a total budget of $135M with over 3,900 students and more than 1,700 employees.

Dr. Burgess has been a board member of the Mississippi Biotechnology Association, served as a Mississippi Universities’ Industrial Outreach Committee member, and was president of the Mississippi Academy of Sciences, 2009-2010. He has served USDA NRSP8: National Animal Genome Research Program as a Bioinformatics Committee member, was one of the two US (and the non-federal) inaugural co-chairs for the Working Group on Animal Biotechnology within the US-EC Task Force on Biotechnology, a National Executive Committee member for the Food Systems Leadership Institute, a University and Industry Consortium (UIC) Executive Committee member and was on the UIC Project Steering Team for its assessment project to define graduate numbers/quality/skills supply vs. demand in agricultural and biotech industries (a collaboration with the Association of Public and Land-grant Universities).