Dr. Khaoula Belhaj Fragnière is the Regulatory Affairs Manager at the International Seed Federation. She has 15 years of experience in the fields of agricultural innovation, private sector and government affairs. Previously she served as government officer within the Federal Office for the Environment, Switzerland, and then later worked as Senior Regulatory Scientist - Scientific Regulatory Affairs & Standards for Philip Morris International.
In her role at the FOEN, she was responsible for law adaptation projects related to regulation of new breeding biotechnologies and synthetic biology. She also represented the Swiss Federal Office for the Environment in the United Nations (Biodiversity Convention) and in the European Food Security Authority (EFSA, GMO panel). Prior to this, Khaoula worked as a Senior Research Associate at the world-class research institute The Sainsbury Laboratory, Norwich, UK where she led various projects and authored several publications on genome editing technologies, molecular mechanisms of plant-microbes’ interactions, autophagy mechanisms, etc. Khaoula holds an agricultural engineering degree in plant production and seed biotechnology, a master’s in plant breeding and a PhD in biology from the University of Fribourg, Switzerland.
