Speakers

Dr Ridolfi was Director for Sustainable Growth and; Development well as Director for& Planet and Prosperity at the Directorate General for International Cooperation and Development (DEVCO) of the European Commission (2013 - 2017).

He was instrumental in developing main policy innovations on the role of the private sector in development, the promotion of financial instruments and blending, notably in the areas of renewable energy and productive agriculture launching, inter alia, initiatives like ELECTRIFI and AGRIFI and, most notably though the conception and the start - up of the 44 Billion EUR European External Investment Plan and the European Fund for Sustainable Development.

Twice Ambassador, Head of Delegation of the European Union (EU), Dr Ridolfi first worked in Suva, Fiji, from 2005 to 2007, where he was in charge of relations of the EU with 15 Pacific countries and territories. In 2010, he was appointed by the High Representative for Foreign Policy of the EU in Uganda, where he served as Ambassador for the EU until September 2013.

From 2008 to 2010, as Head of Global Thematic Programmes of the European Commission, at p;EuropeAid, he managed worldwide programmes dealing with agriculture and rural development, environment and climate change, food security, human development, migration and asylum, renewable energies, as well as the One - Billion - Euro Food Facility in 50 countries.

Dr Ridolfi joined the EU in 1994 and worked in several countries beyond the Pacific and Uganda: Malawi, Namibia and Kosovo as development and economic advise r. Throughout accession negotiations (2001 - 2004), he was the principal coordinator dealing with environment and transport, and was also in charge of Public- Private-Partnerships on which he is a key note speaker and writer.

Instrumental to his drive in the private sector are his working experiences in the private sector before joining the Commission. These experiences, which were mainly in strategic management, finance and marketing engineering, were coupled with lecturing and (later on) with roles as Associate Professor at various universities in Italy and abroad.Dr Ridolfi holds a M.Sc. in Engineering, an MBA and a Ph.D. in A. Technology.

Based at the International Rice Research Institute (IRRI, Philippines) in 1983-1990, he developed the ideotype concept subsequently known as New Plant Type (NPT) and in 2011-2016 led the GRiSP Global Rice Phenotyping Network. Based in AfricaRice (formerly WARDA) in Senegal and Ivory Coast (1991-1998) as systems analyst and Program Leader, he shaped the concept for the NERICA interspecific rices. Working at CIRAD (Montpellier, France) since 1998, Michael has headed several research units, integrating crop physiology, modeling, breeding research and genotype-phenotype association approaches; and developing the SARRAH, SAMARA, EcoMeristem and EcoPalm models. His recent research focused on understanding and predicting phenotypic plasticity and adaptability, notably with regards to climatic factors and abiotic stresses.

His academic training was in chemical engineering (Stanford, B.S., 1980; University of Washington, Ph.D., 1983). He worked 30 years in private industry (Shell, Rhône-Poulenc, Monsanto), and then served at the ILSI Research Foundation as Director of the Center for Integrated Modeling of Sustainable Agriculture and Nutrition Security (CIMSANS) through 2016. Dave’s early career focused on predicting agricultural impacts on water quality. He subsequently developed new modeling approaches to pollen-mediated gene flow and the population genetics of insect and weed resistance. Beginning in 2007, Dave began leading efforts to understand climate adaptation and mitigation imperatives in the global agri-food system. He has served on various national and international teams looking at this issue, including the Executive Secretariat of the US Government’s National Climate Assessment Development & Advisory Committee (2011-2014).

LinkedIn: http://www.linkedin.com/pub/dave-gustafson/26/37/309

Mario has more than 20 years’ experience working on strategic agricultural Research for Development projects in Africa, Latin America, Asia and Europe. Before coming to Australia in 2013, he spent 12 years in Kenya, leading the Sustainable Livestock Futures and Climate Change programmes and the Targeting Pro-Poor Interventions team at the International Livestock Research Institute (ILRI).

Mario is known team player and collaborator, with an extensive network of partners and donors. He works in the areas of global food nutrition and security, global change, sustainable development pathways for smallholder systems, ex-ante impact assessment, and multi-scale integrated assessment. He has experience working at different scales, from the animal to the global level.

Mario participates in key global initiatives on agriculture and global change that shape the research agenda on food and nutritional security. Examples of these are the EAT-Lancet Commission on Food, Planet, Health, the Lancet Commission on Obesity, the IPCC 5th Assessment in the area of agricultural greenhouse gas mitigation

Mario has published more than 400 fully refereed papers, book chapters and reports in his areas of expertise. He is currently on the editorial boards of The Lancet Planetary Health, Agricultural Systems, Global Food Security, Agriculture and Food Security, Tropical Grasslands, Frontiers in Sustainable Food Systems, and has been a guest editor for the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences journal (PNAS).

He is a Fellow of the Australian Academy of Technological Sciences and Engineering and an Honorary Fellow of Food Standards Australia and New Zealand (FSANZ).  He currently chairs the Scientific Board of the Wheat Initiative, which is based in Berlin, Germany.  The G20 group of countries established the Wheat Initiative to provide a global coordination mechanism for wheat research. Peter is also Director of Pastoral Genomics, a New Zealand public-private partnership that applies innovative technologies to pasture improvement and he serves on scientific advisory boards of several research organisations in Europe and North America.

Peter’s interests have focused on the role of modern technologies in crop improvement with a particular focus on the importance of science and education in helping to improve food security.

Leach also studies how climate changes impact plant disease caused by microbial pathogens, primarily studying rice and interactions with bacterial pathogens, and how the Russian wheat aphid microbiome influences the insects’ aggressiveness to plants. Leach is a University Distinguished Professor at Colorado State University, and she also serves as Associate Dean for Research in the College of Agriculture.

Leach is a Fellow and a past President of the American Phytopathological Society (APS).  She is a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) and a Fellow of the American Academy of Microbiology. Leach is a past President of the International Society for Molecular Plant-Microbe Interactions, and recently became President of the International Society of Plant Pathology. In 2016, Leach was named Non-Resident Fellow in the Plant Biology Division of the Noble Foundation. She serves as a member of the Oversight Committee for RICE, a global rice research partnership. For more than 16 years, Leach served on the APS Public Policy Board, where she co-led advocacy for the Phytobiomes Initiative, a systems-level approach to improving crop productivity.

His research concerns bioengineering of photosynthesis toward gaining sustainable increases in crop yield potential and adaptation to global change.  He is Director of the multinational Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation RIPE Project which is developing these technologies for increased photosynthetic efficiency in crops for sustainable yield increases, under climate change.  His mathematically guided engineering of photosynthesis led in November 2016 to a demonstrated on farm 20% increase in crop productivity.  He is Founding and Cheif Editor of the journals Global Change Biology, GCB Bioenergy, and in silico Plants.  He bas been listed by Thomson-Reuters/Clarivate as one of the most highly cited authors on Plant & Animal Biology in every year since 2006 and was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society in 2013.

He holds a PhD in Plant Breeding & Genetics from the Univ. Wisconsin-Madison, and worked as young researcher at UNALM (Perú) and  Rutgers Univ., was scientist and director of various CGIAR Consortium Centers,  and held a Nordic professorship on plant genetic resources at the then Royal  Veterinary and Agricultural Univ. He has written > 800 reports, of which  about 50% are journal articles or edited book chapters with h-index of 47. The  CGIAR awarded to IITA the prestigious 1994 King Baudouin Award for the  multidisciplinary research of the team working in plantain and banana  improvement, in which he was program leader. In 2012, Plant Breeding Reviews dedicated him its vol. 36. He is member of  CGIAR Independent Science and Partnership Council.

He earned a B.S. in Atmospheric Science from Cornell University and a Ph.D. in Climate Science at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography at the University of California, San Diego.

Alex is Science Coordinator and head of the Climate Team for the Agricultural Model Intercomparison and Improvement Project (AgMIP), an international effort involving more than 1000 experts in the agricultural modeling community (now in its ninth year).  In this role he leads efforts to systematically develop, link, and apply climate, crop, livestock, economics, nutrition, and food security models for consistent assessment and intercomparison of climate impacts on the agricultural sector.  A major element of his AgMIP research is coordinating regional and global integrated assessment combining multiple models, methods, scales, and disciplines.  He led the first Coordinated Global and Regional Assessment (CGRA) within AgMIP to examine the implications of +1.5 and +2.0 ºC global warming on local and global food systems, which also enabled an examination of uncertainty from disciplines, models, and scenarios as the future is shaped by environmental, socioeconomic, technological, and political pressures.  He also helps lead multiple efforts within AgMIP to determine core responses of diverse agricultural systems to changes in carbon, temperature, water, and nitrogen, as well as to determine hazard thresholds that are likely to lead to food shocks with repercussions ranging through supply chains, markets, and nutritional outcomes.  Recent work includes preliminary work on agricultural forecasting that integrates weather/climate models and satellite observations into crop models.

Dr. Ruane is contributing to the Sixth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC AR6), serving as Coordinating Lead Author for Working Group 1 Chapter 12: ‘Climate change information for regional impact and for risk assessment’.

He is also a member of the Expert Group for the UN International Strategy for Disaster Risk (UNISDR) Global Risk Assessment Framework, and on the Steering Committee for the Analysis, Integration, and Modelling of the Earth System (AIMES) project at FutureEarth.  He founded and co-Chairs the Vulnerability, Impacts, Adaptation, and Climate Services (VIACS) Advisory Board for the sixth Phase of the Coupled Model Intercomparison Project (CMIP6), which forms a bridge between the climate modeling community and the diverse communities undertaking climate applications.  In each of these areas he works to bring cutting-edge information into applications for agriculture and other impacts communities, but also utilizes the applications lens to provide feedback on priority areas for ESM evaluation and development.

He is hosted at the International Livestock Research Institute (ILRI) in Nairobi, Kenya, where he is a Principal Scientist. He holds honorary positions with the University of Edinburgh and with CSIRO, Australia. His work includes integrated modelling at different scales, evaluating climate change impacts, and assessing and prioritizing adaptation options and policy support in smallholder farming systems. He received degrees from Reading University in the UK and Lincoln College in New Zealand. He has over thirty-five years’ experience in agricultural research for development in many countries throughout the tropics and subtropics, particularly in Africa and Latin America. He is a WGII Lead Author for the IPCC’s Sixth Assessment Report.