Mark Tester is a Professor of Plant Science at KAUST, Chair of the Center of Excellence for Sustainable Food Security and co-Founder of RedSea LLC (now iyris). Professor Tester leads a research program on salinity tolerance in plants. His aspiration is to unlock seawater by developing a new economically viable agricultural system where salt-tolerant crops are irrigated with partially desalinized seawater or brackish groundwater.