Kenn joined Ozgene in 2025 as a Director Strategic Partnering in North America. He is a strong advocate of the power of mouse models in furthering our understanding of biology and disease, and in expediting the drug discovery process.

Kenn received his Ph.D. in Genetics from the University of Connecticut, investigating the role of heterochromatin in development using Drosophila as a model organism. He then switched model organisms and did a Postdoctoral fellowship at The Jackson Laboratory, where he developed hands-on skills generating and analyzing genetically engineered mice and learning the intricacies of mouse genetics and husbandry. From JAX, he moved to Boston University School of Medicine to establish his own lab and continue his research using mouse models to uncover novel genes and molecular mechanisms critical for sex determination and gonad differentiation with the goal to identify potential therapeutic targets. In 2017, he mostly left academia when recruited by Taconic Biosciences.

Besides establishing an NIH and ACS supported research program at BUSM, he quickly became an unofficial advisor to the existing transgenic core and his lab was an extension of that core, providing hands-on training for investigators who wanted to generate gene-targeted mice using ES cell technology. Eventually, as director, he transformed the core into a full-service core, and implemented CRISPR-Cas9 gene-editing technology. Additionally, he chaired multiple animal facility-related committees and helped oversee a program to rederive hundreds of mouse lines to bring the facility up to SPF standards.

Although not directly involved in hands-on model generation as Director of Custom Model Generation Solutions at Taconic, he still was deeply involved in every other aspect of the process – including designing custom models to meet specific customer goals, advising on operational process improvements, implementing new technologies, and conceptualizing, designing, and implementing new products and services.

In his free time, Kenn enjoys spending time with his family hiking, kayaking, biking, and being outdoors.