Dr Catherine Reavey is the Head of Product Development in our Agricultural Programs, responsible for bringing the Friendly™ fall armyworm product to the market and running our soybean looper program. During her time at Oxitec she has held a range of technical leadership roles throughout Oxitec’s R&D and Field Operations divisions, focused on strain development, rearing development, field trials and modelling. She led the teams that developed Oxitec’s self-limiting fall armyworm strain and delivered the first demonstration of factory-scale fall armyworm rearing systems. In 2019 Catherine managed the on-the-ground rearing and first open field releases of fall armyworm in Brazil, leading to deregulation of this product in Brazil.

Catherine is now responsible for delivering successful large-scale field trials of fall armyworm to pave the way to commercialization in Brazil, including the development of deployment methods, validation of product performance and generating all regulatory and product label claim data necessary for commercialization. Since 2018 she has managed an externally funded collaboration to develop a self-limiting soybean looper product.

Catherine joined Oxitec in 2015 and has 10 years experience as an entomologist. Catherine completed her PhD in Biological Sciences at Queen’s University Belfast in 2014, followed by a Research Associate position at Lancaster University. She has a BA in Natural Sciences from the University of Cambridge and an MSc in Environmental Protection and Management from the University of Edinburgh.