Fernando Quezada

As Executive Director of the Biotechnology Center of Excellence Corp. in Massachusetts USA, Fernando is engaged in providing assistance for technology-based economic development initiatives.

With a primary focus on biotechnology-based approaches to biodiversity preservation and development, he has served as consultant to the UN Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean, the Andean Development Corporation and the Board on Science and Technology in International Development of the US National Academy of Sciences.

His professional assignments have included program evaluation for the Ministry of the Economy of Chile, the US-Mexico Foundation for Science, the Puerto Rico Science, Technology and Research Trust, the Foundation for Agrarian Innovation of Chile and the US-Israel Science and Technology Foundation and the UN Industrial Development Organization. He coordinated a study for the German Agency GIZ on The Knowledge Economy in Central America.

In 1985, he served as the first state employee in Massachusetts dedicated to the promotion of government-business-academic collaboration in biotechnology development. He was appointed to Chile’s National Commission for the Development of Biotechnology by the President of Chile and has served as an advisor to the International Association of Science Parks and Areas of Innovation based in Malaga, Spain.

He was appointed by the Governor of Massachusetts to the Board of Trustees at Framingham State University and currently serves on the Board of LASPAU, a higher education development program affiliated with Harvard University. He received the 2015 Foreign Minister’s Commendation from the Foreign Minister of Japan for his work in the area of science and technology cooperation.

Fernando studied at University of California at Los Angeles and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He has taught at the Federal University of Pará in Brazil, the University of São Paulo, Brazil, the Monterrey Institute of Technology in Mexico, and Lesley University in Cambridge, Massachusetts. He has also lectured at professional conferences in Kenya, Ethiopia, Israel, Spain, Italy, France, U.K., Nicaragua and Malaysia. His publications focus on biotechnology commercialization, technology-based innovation and public policy.