Branca M. Silva graduated in Food Engineering from the Escola Superior de Biotecnologia, Universidade Católica Portuguesa (Porto, Portugal), since 1997. She also received a Masters degree in Quality Control (Scientific Area Water and Foods) and a Ph.D. in Nutrition and Food Chemistry both from the Faculdade de Farmácia,Universidade do Porto (Porto, Portugal), in 2000 and 2005, respectively.
Currently, she is an Associate Professor (with Habilitation) at the Faculdade de Ciências da Saúde, Universidade da Beira Interior (Covilhã, Portugal).
She is (co)author of about 100 scientific papers and book chapters, has about 4000 citations and an h-index of 35.
Her research interests are oriented towards the Medicinal and Food Phytochemistry, and Nutrition areas.
She is an Editorial Board Member and reviewer of several international journals and co-editor of 2 books. She has also been invited speaker and part of the Organizing Committee Boards of several international conferences.
Dr. Kashmir Singh is a Professor in the department of biotechnology, Panjab University, Chandigarh. With a focus on Plant biotechnology, his research interests span, metabolic engineering of secondary metabolites and biotic and abiotic stress tolerance in plants.
Early in his career, he received the Marie Curie Fellowship from European commission on biotechnology. Later, he received International Research Associateship at Missouri state University, USA. He was also a visiting scientist of McGill University, Montreal Canada, where he worked in the area of stress tolerance in cereal crops. Recently he was awarded INSA bilateral exchange fellowship to Poland. His major contribution in research work was understanding the molecular aspects of secondary metabolism in medicinal plants such as chlorophytum borivilianum, Phyllanthus emblica, Saussaurea lappa etc. He is also studying fungal resistance in grapes by identifying molecular markers, genes and non-coding RNAs associated with biotic stress tolerance.
He has guided 21 Ph.D. and 25 M.Sc. students and has over 90 publications. He is member of board of studies, research degree committees, reviewer of international journals and member of grant review committee of USA-Israel BARD grants. He has represented the Institute in international conferences and visited several countries including Poland, USA and Canada.
Dr. Anshuman Singh is a Senior Scientist (Horticulture) at ICAR- Central Institute for Subtropical Horticulture, Lucknow, India. His primary research interests include genetic improvement of tree fruits such as mango, guava and Indian blackberry (jamun) for higher fruit yield and quality, and tolerance to insect-pests, diseases and environmental stresses such as salinity.
Mansour Sobeh holds a B.Sc. in Chemistry from Ain Shams University, Egypt, an M.Sc. in Analytical Chemistry from the German University in Cairo, Egypt, and a Ph.D. in Natural Sciences (Dr. rer. nat.) from Heidelberg University, Germany. He is currently an Assistant Professor at Mohammed VI Polytechnic University
Spanish Evolutionary Ecologist. Formerly at Stanford (US) and CNRS (France). Now at USC (Spain).
My research looks at the evolutionary ecology of plant-animal interactions and the impact of global change on biodiversity, particularly regarding ecosystem functions and services such as carbon storage.
Adriano Sofo graduated with a Master Degree in Biological Sciences from the University of Bari, Italy, in 1997. He spent three years (1999-2002) at the University of Basilicata, Italy, with a Doctorate in Crop Productivity. From 2000 to 2001, he also was Researcher at the National Agency for New Technologies, Energy and Sustainable Economic Development (ENEA), Italy. As Postdoctoral Training, in 2002, he worked at the Institute of Molecular Biology and Biotechnology, Heraklion, Greece, within a Marie Curie Fellowship. In 2007, he graduated with a second Master Degree in Plant Biotechnology from the University of Basilicata. He then trained for four years as a Postdoctoral Fellow at the University of Basilicata, where he also worked as Assistant Professor in Agricultural Chemistry. In 2015, he was awarded with a Fulbright Research Scholar grant to spend at the University of California, Davis. In 2017, he received a fellowship award from the OECD's Co-operative Research Programme at the University of Waikato, New Zealand.
Professor, Wheat Biosecurity. Australian Research Council Future Fellow, Research School of Biology, The Australian National University. Associate Editor of Functional Plant Biology
PhD from the University of California, Berkeley. Research interests include the phylogeny and evolution of plants with a particular focus on groups of vascular plants that are distributed in Mesoamerica and especially endemic to Mexico. Also interested in cloud forest flora. Systematics and taxonomy of orchids in Epidendreae are as well part of my interests. In addition, I am conducting investigation on diversity, evolutionary biology and ecology of geophytes an interesting life form in plants. Genomics and economic botany of underutilized fruits is one of my new lines of research.
Valeria Spagnuolo is Associate Professor in Botany at the Department of Biology at the Federico II University of Naples. She obtained a Ph.D. in molecular systematics (plants) and the scientific qualification to Full Professor 05/A1 (Botany) during the ASN 2018.
Dr. Spagnuolo was involved in several research projects, with a focus on biomonitoring and phytoremediation, within her task/unit and in international teams (the most recent ones: EU Project FP7- ENV.2011.3.1.9-1 Mossclone (2012-15); LIFE11 ENV/IT/275 Ecoremed (2012-2017); PON 03PE_00107. Biopolis (2013-2017).
Dr. Spagnuolo's expertise includes genetic variation in natural populations of mosses along environmental gradients; biomonitoring of air quality by cryptogams and vascular plants; and phytoremediation of metal-polluted soil. In recent years, her long research experience has been centred on plant response to abiotic stresses and biomonitoring of indoor air pollution.
She is involved in editorial activities, as a reviewer for international journals (e.g. Environmental Pollution, Frontiers in Plant Science), as a guest editor in Atmosphere and Plant Journals, and as an editor of the latest Italian edition of Raven (Zanichelli).
Dr. Spagnuolo has published over 60 publications (Scopus ID 6602352988), with an h-index 20 and over 1200 citations. She also detects a patent as the inventor of a tool for biomonitoring of air quality (EP 3 076 171 A1).
Professor of Plant Genetics and Genomics with La Trobe University. Director AgriBio, the Centre for AgriBioscience, Executive Director, BioSciences Research Division of the Victorian Department of Primary Industries, Chief Scientist of the Dairy Futures Cooperative Research Centre, Chairman of the Victorian AgriBiosciences Centre; Recipient of the Australian Thinker of Year Award; President of the International Association for Plant Biotechnology; Former Chief Editor Plant Science.
1978-1984 Study of Biochemistry at Tuebingen University and LMU Munich
1981 Short term visit Dept. of Biochemistry, University of Cambridge
1984-1985 Max-Planck-Institute for Biochemistry, Martinsried, Diploma
1985-1989 Max-Planck-Institute for Plant Breeding, Cologne, PhD with J. Schell
1990-1996 Institute for Plant Science, ETH Zurich, Assistentin
1996-2002 Institute for Plant Science, ETH Zürich, Oberassistentin
2002 Full Professor Bielefeld University
Gavin is interested in applied research synthesis (combining scientific information to inform policy). Primary interests are meta-analysis and Bayesian belief networks. He has a deep mislike of P values much preferring effect sizes and confidence intervals, or better still probabilities of direct relevance to decision-making. Gavin's work on meta-analysis spans applied agriculture, food, rural development, ecology and medicine reflecting a belief in generic methods for Evidence Based X (EBX).
I am an elected member of the Society for Research Synthesis Methods and associate editor of its journal, Research Synthesis Methods. I am also associate editor for PeerJ and statistical editor for the Cochrane Pain and Palliative Care Group. I’m a member of the National Centre for Ecological Analysis and Synthesis Meta-analysis Working Group and co-author of the Handbook of Meta-analysis in ecology and evolution. I am also co-chair and editor of a new Campbell Collaboration Food Security group.