Speakers
Mrs Mary Robinson
President, Mary Robinson Foundation – Climate Change
Mary Robinson is President of the Mary Robinson Foundation – Climate Justice. She served as President of Ireland from 1990-1997 and UN High Commissioner for Human Rights from 1997-2002. She is a member of the Elders and the Club of Madrid and the recipient of numerous honours and awards including the Presidential Medal of Freedom from the President of the United States Barack Obama. She is a member of the Lead Group of the Scaling Up Nutrition (SUN) Movement.
A former President of the International Commission of Jurists and former chair of the Council of Women World Leaders she was President and founder of Realizing Rights: The Ethical Globalization Initiative from 2002-2010.
Mary Robinson serves as Honorary President of Oxfam International and Patron of the Board of the Institute of Human Rights and Business in addition to being a board member of several organisations including the Mo Ibrahim Foundation and the European Climate Foundation. Mary is the Chancellor of the University of Dublin since 1998.
Mr Tom Arnold
Chief Executive, Concern Worldwide
Tom Arnold was appointed CEO of Concern Worldwide in 2001. He was previously Assistant Secretary General and Chief Economist in the Department of Agriculture and Food in Ireland. Tom has served on a number of high level bodies including the UN Millennium Project’s Hunger Task Force the Irish Hunger Task Force, the UN’s Central Emergency Response Fund’s (CERF) Advisory Group, the European Food Security Group (EFSG) and the Irish Government’s Commission on Taxation.
He serves on the Board of the Consultative Group for International Agricultural Research (CGIAR) charged with leading the reform of the international agriculture research system. He is a member of the International Food Policy Research Institute’s (IFPRI) Advisory Board. In April 2012, he was appointed by the Secretary General of the United Nations Ban Ki-Moon to the Lead Group of the Scaling Up Nutrition (SUN) Movement. He is Chairperson of the Irish Times Trust and a Director of the Irish Times and is also a member of the Advisory Board of the UCD Institute of Food and Health.
Tom is a graduate in Agricultural Economics from University College Dublin and has Masters Degrees from the Catholic University of Louvain and Trinity College Dublin. He has received Honorary Doctorates of Laws from the National University of Ireland and Science from University College Dublin.
Dr Tommy Boland
Lecturer in Animal Production, University College Dublin
Dr. Tommy Boland graduated from Agricultural Science in UCD in 2001 and was awarded his Ph.D. in animal nutrition in 2005. Since then he has been a lecturer in ruminant nutrition and sheep production and is extremely active in ruminant nutrition research. He is also a part time farmer.
His current research interests include rumen function, including dietary effects on fermentation, methane emissions, nitrogen metabolism and the interaction between diet and rumen microbial profile, impacts of in utero nutrition on subsequent animal performance and feedstuff analysis.
Dr. Boland is secretary on the organising committee of GGAA2013 and has given invited presentations at the UNFCCC in 2007 and 2009. He has published approximately fifty peer-reviewed scientific papers in the area of ruminant nutrition on a range of topics including digestion kinetics of ruminant animals, enteric methane mitigation, reduction of nitrogen losses from dairy systems, grazing management systems for dairy cows and mineral nutrition.
Dr Mark W. Rosegrant
International Food Policy Research Institute
Mark W. Rosegrant is the Director of the Environment and Production Technology Division at the International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI) in Washington, DC. With a Ph.D. in Public Policy from the University of Michigan, he has extensive experience in research and policy analysis in agriculture and economic development, with an emphasis on water resources and other natural resource and agricultural policy issues as they impact food security, rural livelihoods, and environmental sustainability. He currently directs research on climate change, water resources, sustainable land management, genetic resources and biotechnology, and agriculture and energy.
He is the author or editor of 7 books and over 100 refereed papers in agricultural economics, water resources, and food policy analysis. Dr. Rosegrant has won numerous awards, such as Outstanding Journal Article (2008), Quality of Communications Award (2004), and Distinguished Policy Contribution Award (2002) awarded by the Agricultural and Applied Economics Association (formerly American Agricultural Economics Association); and Best Article Award (2005) from the International Water Resources Association. Dr. Rosegrant is a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science and the Agricultural and Applied Economics Association.
Professor Patrick Cunningham
Professor of Animal Genetics, Trinity College, Dublin.
Patrick Cunningham is Professor of Animal Genetics at Trinity College Dublin (TCD). He graduated from University College Dublin (UCD) in 1956 with first class honours in Agricultural Science followed by an MSc in Animal Nutrition in 1957, and a PhD in Animal Genetics from Cornell University in 1962.
In 1962, he began a research career with An Foras Talúntais (now Teagasc), becoming Department Head in 1970 and Deputy Director (Research) in 1980. Professor Cunningham’s early work focused mainly on genetic improvement in the Irish cattle population. He pioneered methods of genetic evaluation, introduction and assessment of new breeds and strains, and the economic evaluation of breeding options and strategies. His research has been published in over 100 papers in refereed journals, and has twice been featured on the cover of Nature. He was elected President of the Commission on Animal Genetics of the European Federation of Animal Science (EAAP) in 1974, President of EAAP in 1978 and President of the World Association for Animal Production in 1984.
In 1964, Professor Cunningham began to contribute to the newly-established Department of Genetics in TCD, and in 1974, he was appointed Professor of Animal Genetics.
In 1988, he moved to the World Bank as visiting professor at the Economic Development Institute. From 1990 to 1993, he was appointed Director of Animal Production and Health at the Food and Agricultural Organisation (FAO) of the UN in Rome. During this period also directed the Screwworm Eradication Programme for North Africa, the largest international campaign of biological control ever undertaken.
On his return from the World Bank in 1989, he initiated a new programme of research in TCD. This was based on the use of newly-developed methods of reading DNA to measure genetic diversity and plan livestock improvement in developing countries. The first results of this work, emerging in the early 1990s, rewrote the history of animal domestication, demonstrating for the first time the separate domestication of cattle in India on the one hand and in Africa and Europe on the other. This work has since been expanded by Professor Cunningham and his colleagues to other species including horses, salmon and humans, placing Irish research at the forefront of international work in this area.
Following the BSE crisis in 1996, Professor Cunningham and his colleagues developed a system of DNA traceability for the meat industry. They went on to establish a biotechnology company IdentiGEN, which deploys these technologies in Europe and North America.
In January 2007 Professor Cunningham was appointed Chief Scientific Adviser (CSA) to the Irish Government. He led Ireland's bid to host and deliver Euroscience Open Forum (ESOF2012) and Dublin City of Science 2012. He completed his term as CSA in August 2012.
Professor Ian Graham
Weston Chair of Biochemical Genetics and is the Director of the Centre for Novel Agricultural Products, University of York, UK
Ian holds the Weston Chair of Biochemical Genetics and is the Director of the Centre for Novel Agricultural Products (CNAP: www.cnap.org.uk) at the University of York. His research interests focus on the metabolic regulation of gene expression in higher plants and metabolic engineering of novel oils and other high value chemicals. Current projects include the development of novel oilcrops such as Jatropha curcas and medicinal crops such as Artemisia annua, the primary source of the leading anti-malarial drug artemisinin, and Papaver somniferum (opium poppy), the source of a number of important analgesics and other drugs. Funding for Ian’s research comes from a range of sources including industry, UK Government, EU, UK and overseas charities.
Ian also chairs the board of the recently established Biorenewables Development Centre Ltd (BDC), a not-for-profit company based on the York Science Park, with extensive facilities for feedstock development, extraction and processing. The BDC remit is to translate R+D activities into commercially viable biorenewables-based processes and products in collaboration with industry.
Following graduation from The Queen’s University of Belfast with a first class honours degree in Botany and Genetics in 1986, Ian obtained a PhD in Plant Molecular Biology from the University of Edinburgh in 1989, and went on to do postdoctoral research at The University of Oxford and The Carnegie Institution Plant Biology Laboratory at Stanford University. He took up a faculty position at The University of Glasgow in 1993, before moving to the University of York in 1999.
Ian has served on a range of national and international committees that inform policy relevant to plant and crop science, and currently is a Trustee Member of the Governing Council of the John Innes Centre, Norwich, as well as Chair of its Science & Impact Advisory Board, a member of the Scientific Advisory Board of Genoplante (a French public-private plant and crop science research initiative), and a member of the BBSRC Industrial Biotechnology and Bioenergy (IBBE) Strategy Advisory Panel.
Professor Tim Wheeler
University of Reading, UK
Tim Wheeler is currently Professor of Crop Science at the University of Reading and Deputy Chief Scientific Adviser for the UK Department for International Development. For more than 20 years he has published extensively on how climate change could impact on the sustainability of agriculture and food.
Tim has provided advice on the sustainability of food and farming to agri-businesses and food multi-nationals, often up to Board level. He has extensive experience of working with policy-makers in the UK and internationally, providing information and advice to Ministers and acting as Specialist Adviser to the House of Lords in 2010. In 2005 he gave the prestigious Royal Society Public Lecture on 'Growing crops in a changing climate'. He was appointed to BBSRC Council in April 2012.
Dr Siwa Msangi
International Food Policy Institute, Washington, USA
Siwa Msangi is a Senior Research Fellow in the Environment and Production Technology Division, and co-leads IFPRI's research theme 1, which focuses on the major socio-economic and bio-physical drivers affecting agricultural production and trade, and their impacts on nutrition, poverty and the environment. Much of Siwa’s current research activity focuses on the linkages between energy and agriculture (esp the impacts of biofuels), and the contribution of aquaculture to global food supply, and its interactions with livestock. Siwa also has a broader research background in natural resource management -- especially that of surface and groundwater management policy – and in studying the dynamics of user behavior in the exploitation of common pool resources.
A Tanzanian national, Siwa joined IFPRI in August 2004 as a post-doctoral fellow, after obtaining his degree in Agricultural and Resource Economics at the University of California at Davis. He earned a Masters degree in International Development Policy at the Food Policy Research Institute at Stanford University, where he also received an undergraduate degree in Chemical Engineering.
Kevin Farrell
Special Envoy for Hunger
Kevin Farrell is Ireland’s Special Envoy for Hunger, appointed to assist in highlighting issues around global hunger, and Ireland’s work in addressing them. He had previously been a member of Irelands Hunger Task Force, whose report in 2008 has been seen as a landmark one, and which has served as the key policy guideline for Ireland’s very important international role in hunger alleviation. As Special Envoy he has prepared a report in 2010 on Ireland’s ongoing hunger response, making several important recommendations which have helped further guide Irelands strategy on the issue.
Between 1989 and 2007 Mr Farrell had held several key positions with United Nations World Food Programme (WFP), including as Head of WFP’s Great Lakes Operations in the aftermath of the Rwanda refugee crisis, and later as UN Humanitarian Coordinator for Northern Iraq. He has also, over the period, served as WFP Representative in Uganda, Somalia and, between 2002 and 2007, in Zimbabwe. Prior to his career with WFP he had worked with CONCERN Worldwide in Bangladesh. He was educated at UCD, TCD and University College Swansea.
Mr Farrell has a strong track record on hunger issues, bringing a wealth of valuable field experience, in both development and in emergency humanitarian response, to his current role as Special Envoy. He has been especially active in ensuring that due importance and focus be given to the issue of under-nutrition in Ireland’s hunger effort, and in that of global partners.
Professor Shane Ward
Professor of Biosystems Engineering at the National University of Ireland, Dublin
With over 200 peer-reviewed publications and links to industry, Professor Ward has a long track record in research and innovation. He has developed collaborative research programmes with industry and has led several national and EU funded international research consortia, such as the FP6 SigmaChain project on food chain integrity. He successfully bid for the Irish Government’s flagship Charles Parsons biomass-to-energy(b2e) programme (a €3 million fund plus €1 million “leveraged” from industry). The Charles Parsons programme focuses on biomass-to-energy, including the use of “smart systems” (viz. systems optimization using sensors, logic, cloud computing, etc.) to enhance the operational efficiency of energy systems within the agri-food sector.
Professor Ward recently completed a term as a member of the university’s Senior Management Team Executive (2008-2011), and Head (2008-2011) of UCD’s largest school, the UCD School of Agriculture, Food Science & Veterinary Medicine (including Biosystems Engineering). At its peak, this school had annual research and innovation expenditure of ca. €50 million, and annual operational budget of ca. €30 million. Professor Ward has a particular interest in the food v. fuel debate, which addresses the challenge of how to exploit the b2e potential of agriculture while also meeting the food needs of mankind and the output aspirations of the industry. This is particularly important in the context of the expansionary targets of the Irish Government’s Food Harvest 2020strategy.
shane.ward@ucd.ie
Professor Brian O’Neill
Leads the Integrated Assessment Modeling (IAM) group within the Climate Change Research section at NCAR
The IAM group is also part of NCAR's Integrated Science Program (ISP). Brian holds a Ph.D. in Earth Systems Science and an M.S. in Applied Science, both from New York University, and has worked previously on the science staff of the Environmental Defense Fund in New York, and as an Assistant and Associate Professor (Research) at Brown University's Watson Institute for International Studies. During the period 2005-2009, he founded and led the Population and Climate Change Program at the International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis (IIASA) in Austria.
His research interests are in the field of integrated assessment modeling of climate change, which links socio-economic and natural science elements of the climate change issue in order to address applied, policy-relevant questions. Current areas of focus include the relationship between socio-economic development pathways, emissions, and climate change impacts, and scenario analyses linking long-term climate change goals to shorter-term actions.
Brian is the lead author (along with Landis MacKellar and Wolfgang Lutz) of Population and Climate Change, published by Cambridge University Press. He has also served as a lead author for the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change's Fourth Assessment Report in a volume on impacts, adaptation and vulnerability (Working Group II), and for the Millennium Ecosystem Assessment (MA) in a volume on Scenarios. He is currently serving as lead author in the IPCC's Fifth Assessment Report, in Working Group II.
Professor Joachim von Braun
Centre for Development Research, Bonn, Germany
Joachim von Braun is a Director of the Center for Development Research and Professor for Economic and Technological Change at University of Bonn, Germany.
From 2002 to 2009 he was Director General of the International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI) based in Washington DC, the world's premier research institute addressing food, agriculture, nutrition and related development policies. Before these positions, von Braun was professor of Food Economics and Food Policy at Kiel University, Germany. He received his doctoral degree in agricultural economics from the University of Goettingen, Germany in 1978.
von Braun serves on the boards of several academic journals, as well as on the international advisory boards of a number of research and policy organisations. From 2000 to 2003 he was president of the International Association of Agricultural Economists (IAAE). He is an elected fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS), a member of the Academy of Science of North Rhine-Westphalia, Germany, and a member of the international advisory board of the Chinese Academy of Agricultural Science (CAAS). He received an Honorary Doctoral Degree from the University of Stuttgart-Hohenheim in Germany, and from the Royal Swedish Academy for Agriculture and Forestry he received the Bertebos Prize.
He has published research on international development economics topics, including science and technology; on policy issues relating to trade and aid, famine, health, and nutrition; and on a wide range of agricultural economics research issues. von Braun has worked in Sub-Saharan Africa, Central America, Egypt, Russia, and China.
