Conference Speakers and Chairs: Biosketches

Biosketch coming.

Prior to assuming her current position Isher Judge Ahluwalia was an economist at the International Monetary Fund, a fellow at the National Institute of Public Finance and Policy in New Delhi, and a research professor at the Centre for Policy Research also in New Delhi. She has served as a consultant to the United Nations University and the Indian government. A member of IFPRI's Board of Trustees, she received her Ph.D. in economics from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Ahluwalia's research focuses on industrial development and economic liberalization in India, a topic on which she has published four books and numerous articles.

Grace Akello has been minister of state for gender, labor and social development (Entandikwa) in the Government of Uganda since 1999 and a member of Parliament since 1996. She has been active in sociopolitical and cultural issues in Africa for more than 30 years. She advised on the setting up of a Presidential Commission to help resolve armed conflict in the Teso area of Uganda and to reconcile Teso to Uganda's National Resistance Movement Government. Subsequently she served as secretary and then chair of the commission. She founded the Nile Book Service, which specializes in sending useful textbooks to African schools, and was a founding member of Teso Development Trust. She has served as a board member of Christian Aid, worked with the Commonwealth Secretariat and the German Agency for Technical Cooperation, and served as deputy editor of Viva, a Nairobi-based women's magazine.

Klaus Ammann has been the director of the Botanical Garden at the University of Bern since 1996. He has been a professor at the university since 2000. His research includes the chemotaxonomy and molecular systems of lichens, ecological monitoring, and gene flow and plant conservation in Europe. He is a member of a number of committees, including the coordination group of the European Science Foundation, the Biosafety Committee of the Government of Switzerland, and the GMO Expert Group of the European Commission Directorate General. He is chairman of the European Group of Plant Specialists in the World Conservation Union (IUCN).

Tunku Abdul Aziz has occupied senior management positions in the public and private sectors in Malaysia, Hong Kong, and the UK. He has served as adviser to the Central Bank of Malaysia; group director of Sime Darby Ltd., one of Southeast Asia's largest business conglomerates; and director of the Commonwealth Secretariat in London. He helped found the Malaysian chapter of Transparency International, the global coalition against corruption. He is vice chair of the Board of Transparency International, a member of the World Bank High Level Advisory Group on Anti-Corruption in the East Asia and Pacific Region, and a member of the Asian Pacific Advisory Panel on Good Urban Governance.

Sartaj Aziz began his career as a policymaker in Pakistan in the 1950s, becoming a joint secretary in the Planning Commission in 1967. In 1971 he entered the field of international development, holding high-level positions at the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, World Food Council, and the International Fund for Agricultural Development. In 1984 Aziz returned to Pakistan as minister of state for food, agriculture and cooperatives, and subsequently held ministerial positions in finance and foreign affairs. Aziz has also held high-level advisory appointments in international development and published extensively on hunger, poverty, and development.

Associate Professor, International/Development Economics
Royal Veterinary and Agricultural University, Denmark

Christian Friis Bach has worked at or consulted for the World Bank; the Institute of Economics, University of Copenhagen; the Danish Institute of Agricultural and Fisheries Economics; the Danish Foreign Affairs/Environmental Ministry; the European Union; and the Australian Department of the Environment. He has also taught the annual course in global general equilibrium models held by the Global Trade Analysis Project (GTAP). Bach has been active in a number of NGOs, such as Amnesty International and Third World Import. In 1993-94 he took the initiative to establish a fair trade organization in Denmark (Max Havelaar). From 1997 to 2001 he was chairman of the Danish Association for International Co-operation (MS). He is a board member of the Centre for Development Research and the International Institute for Sustainable Development.

David Beckmann is president of Bread for the World, a Christian citizens' movement against hunger. Its 45,000 members, including 2,000 churches, urge the U.S. government to take actions to reduce hunger, both domestic and international. Beckmann is a Lutheran pastor, commissioned at his ordination to be a missionary-economist. He served in Bangladesh for a church-related relief and development agency and at the World Bank for 15 years before moving to Bread for the World. He earned degrees from Yale University, Christ Seminary, and the London School of Economics. He holds honorary degrees from Villanova University, Capital University, and the Berkeley Divinity School at Yale.

Keith Bezanson has devoted his entire career to international development. During the mid-1960s he worked as a secondary school teacher in Nigeria, and subsequently lectured and directed a national research program in Ghana. He then joined the Canadian International Development Agency, where he was director of the East African Program; director general in charge of all areas relating to Canada's participation in the multilateral development banks; and vice president of the Americas Branch. In 1985, Bezanson became Canada's ambassador to Peru and Bolivia. From 1991 to 1997 he was president of the International Development Research Centre (IDRC) in Canada. In March of 1997 he assumed the directorship of the Institute of Development Studies.

John Bongaarts has worked at the Population Council since 1973. His research has focused on a variety of population issues, including the determinants of fertility, population-environment relationships, the demographic impact of the AIDS epidemic, and population policy options in the developing world. He is currently serving as chairman of the Panel on Population Projections of the U.S. National Academy of Sciences, National Research Council. He is a member of the Royal Dutch Academy of Sciences and a fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. He has received the Robert J. Lapham Award and the Mindel Sheps Award from the Population Association of America and the Research Career Development Award from the U.S. National Institutes of Health.

Before joining IFPRI as a visiting research fellow in 1995, Eugenio Díaz-Bonilla was in charge of agricultural trade analysis and negotiations at the Embassy of Argentina in Washington, DC. He has also worked with a number of governments and international organizations in Latin America and the Caribbean on macroeconomic, trade, and poverty policies. His research focuses on the interface between financial, macroeconomic, and trade policies, and on the agricultural sector in Latin America and the Caribbean. Díaz-Bonilla received his Ph.D. in economics from Johns Hopkins University.

Joachim von Braun directs the Center for Development Research and heads the center's Department for Economic and Technical Change. He is also a professor at the University of Bonn. From 1982 to 1993 Braun was a research fellow in and director of IFPRI's Food Consumption and Nutrition Division. Subsequently he held the Chair for Food Economics, Food Policy and World Food Issues at the University of Kiel. Braun is president of the International Association of Agricultural Economists and member of the Academy of Science of the state of Northrhine Westphalia. His research focuses on international development economics and policy, the role of information technology in development, transforming economies, food security and a range of other agricultural economics issues.

Piet Bukman, president of EuronAid since May 2001, has been a leading decisionmaker in his native The Netherlands. He has served as minister for development cooperation (1986-1989), minister of foreign trade (1989-1990), and minister of agriculture, nature-management and fisheries (1990-1994). He was president of the Christian Democratic Party from 1980 to 1986, and has served as spokesman in both the Upper and Lower houses of Parliament and as speaker of the Lower House. He continues to be the chairman of the Foreign Affairs Committee of the Christian Democratic Party. Bukman has also served as special advisor to the director general of the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (for the World Food Conference in 1995). He is currently a member of several boards, including that of the Netherlands Development Finance Company.

Margaret Catley-Carlson has been involved in governmental and international policymaking and programs for more than 30 years. She was president of the Canadian International Development Agency from 1983 to 1989 and of the Population Council from 1991 to 1999. A former assistant undersecretary in the Department of External Affairs and deputy minister of health in Canada, she is currently chair of a number of international organizations, including The Global Water Partnership, the Center for Agriculture and Biosciences International (UK), and the International Development Research Centre (vice chair). She was an assistant secretary general in the United Nations, serving as deputy executive director of operations for the United Nations Children's Fund.

At age 10, David Dalrymple is a part-time student at the University of Maryland, an avid reader and writer, a musician, inventor, designer, community volunteer and fundraiser, and an experienced speaker. The Johns Hopkins University Talent Search awarded him a distinction in both verbal and math skills, noting that at age 8 David scored higher than the average 18-year-old. David's public presentations to date include appearances on two televised panels for the White House/Smithsonian Millennium Celebration; a demonstration of his Lego MindStorms to Senator John Glenn; a talk on how to make dreams come true to students of a math institute; and a presentation on AIDS research at the Howard Hughes Medical Institute. Disney and McDonald's have recognized David for his volunteer work, choosing him from more than 100,000 children worldwide as one of their 2000 Millennium Dreamers.

Angela Thoko Didiza has served as the South African minister for agriculture and land affairs for the last two years. She was deputy minister for agriculture from 1994 to 1999. Before that she was involved in a number of civic and nongovernmental organizations, including as national deputy general secretary of the South African Young Women's Christian Association, member of the Women's Advisory Committee of the South African Council of Churches, and national general secretary of the Women's National Coalition.

Bärbel Dieckmann was elected lady mayor of Bonn in 1995. She was reelected in 1999. A member of the Social Democratic Party (SPD) since 1972, she has been active in local politics for 20 years. Before she became lady mayor, she served as a citizen representative on planning and transport committees for the city of Bonn, a member of the SPD parliamentary group in the City Council, and a member of the committee for economic promotion and city property. Currently she is also president of the German section of the Council of European Municipalities and Regions. Dieckmann served in various educational capacities before entering local politics, including as a lecturer in sociology, a member of the state council for curricula advising, and a member of the State Textbook Commission.

Uschi Eid has served in both parliamentary and international development posts for the German government. She has been a member of parliament for more than ten years. She coordinated a program for trained returnees in Eritrea for the German Agency for Technical Cooperation (GTZ). Eid became parliamentary state secretary in 1998.

Julian Gonsalves has had 25 years of experience in international rural and agricultural development. For 15 of those years he had senior-level responsibility for program development and management at the International Institute of Rural Reconstruction (IIRR), first as director of the Appropriate Technology Unit and then as vice president for program. He proposed, field-tested, and developed the participatory workshop process for documenting best practices, now considered one of the more innovative services provided by IIRR. Before joining IIRR he was a research associate at the University of Dar es Salaam, and before that he held training, communication, extension, and teaching posts in India. He served for 3 years on the NGO Committee of the CGIAR and has won several awards, including, most recently, the Sustainable Agriculture and Rural Development award from Germany in 1997.

Philippe Guiton began his career in international relief in Chad, where he worked as a logistics officer, orphanage director, and country representative for German Emergency Doctors. He then worked in Ethiopia and Somalia for the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees. Guiton joined World Vision in 1995 as director for Burundi, subsequently becoming regional relief coordinator for East Africa. Currently he is Africa relief manager for World Vision's responses to complex humanitarian emergencies in the region.

Ashok Gulati has served in both academic and policy advising capacities. Prior to joining IFPRI in 2001, Ashok Gulati was a NABARD chair professor at the Institute of Economic Growth and chief economist at the National Council of Applied Economic Research, both in Delhi, India. He was also a member of the Economic Advisory Council of the Prime Minister of India. Gulati's research focuses on the functioning and restructuring of agricultural markets; trade liberalization and its impact on producers and consumers; pricing policies and their efficiency and welfare impact; and the role of infrastructure and institutions in making markets function efficiently.

Before joining IFPRI as a research fellow in 1990, Lawrence Haddad was a lecturer in quantitative development economics at the University of Warwick. He recently completed a one-year sabbatical as a visiting scholar at the London School of Economics. Haddad's research focuses on a wide range of issues related to the well-being of the poor, including the design of policies and programs intended to reduce poverty and malnutrition; the impact of gender difference in access to resources on nutrition and poverty; the role of community participation in the performance of poverty programs; and the challenges rapid urbanization poses for the poor. Haddad received his Ph.D. in food research from Stanford University.

For almost 20 years Volker Hausmann served the city of Bielefeld, Germany, in various administrative capacities. For half that time he was first the treasurer and then the head town commissioner. In 1995 he became the secretary general of Deutsche Weltungerhilfe (German Agro Action). Hausmann studied law in Marburg and Tübingen.

Peter Hazell served as director of IFPRI's Agricultural Growth Linkages Program prior to becoming a principal economist in the World Bank's Agriculture and Rural Development Department. In 1992 he returned to IFPRI as director of the Environment and Production Technology Division. Hazell currently conducts research on sustainable farming practices, with a particular focus on property rights issues and the management of climate risks to reduce land degradation in semi-arid regions. Hazell trained as a general agriculturalist in the United Kingdom and obtained his Ph.D. in agricultural economics from Cornell University.

Sue Horton works on issues of nutrition, health, labor markets, and poverty in developing countries, and is the editor of four books and author of many journal articles, book chapters, and technical reports on these topics. She has served as a consultant to the World Bank, the Asian Development Bank, IFPRI, UNICEF, FAO, and UNDP, among others, and has worked in a variety of countries, including Bangladesh, Bolivia, China, Ghana, Jamaica, Philippines, Tanzania, and Viet Nam.

Heinz Imhof is chair of the Board of Directors of Syngenta, a leading agribusiness company formed in 2000 with the merging of Novartis Agribusiness and Zeneca Agrochemicals. It is headquartered in Basel, Switzerland. Imhof graduated from the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology with a degree in agronomy. From 1996 to 1999, he was deputy executive head of Novartis Agribusiness and head of Novartis Seeds. He subsequently became head of Novartis Agribusiness and a member of the Novartis Executive Committee. Imhof was recently appointed president of the International Food and Agribusiness Management Association.

Manuel de Jesús Reyes is a smallholder farmer and part-time extensionist for the Association of Advisors for a Sustainable, Ecological and People-Centered Agriculture (COSECHA) in Honduras. Until 1992, Manuel was using traditional farming methods on his farm, each year clearing his fields by cutting down and burning the woody bushes and weeds to plant maize, beans, and sorghum.

H.-Jochen de Haas is an animal scientist heading the Section for Rural Development and World Food Security in the German Federal Ministry of Economic Co-operation and Development (BMZ). From 1970 to 1974, he worked as an adviser to the Kenyan Ministry of Agriculture, and was stationed at the National Animal Husbandry Research Station in Naivasha. At this time he was also the deputy head of the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations' Sheep and Goat Development Project. He went on to work as a livestock scientist at the University of Bonn's Institute of Animal Breeding and Animal Feeding, joining BMZ in 1978. At BMZ he worked in various capacities, including having responsibility for policy guidelines for agricultural and rural development and advising on international agricultural research programs. Jochen de Haas heads the German delegation to the Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research.

Vice President
World Bank

Ian Johnson is the key decisionmaker and spokesperson on the World Bank's environmental and social work. In this position, which he assumed in 1998, he oversees the environment, rural development, and social development departments, and heads the Bank's environmentally and socially sustainable development network, as well as the Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research. His earlier positions at the Bank include senior manager of the environment department and administrator of the Global Environment Facility. Before joining the Bank in 1980, Johnson worked with an NGO and the United Nations Children's Fund in rural Bangladesh.

Robbin Johnson joined Cargill in 1971. He became its senior vice president for corporate affairs in 2000. He is on the board of the Cargill Foundation; the International Policy Council on Food, Agriculture and Trade; and the National Center for APEC (the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation forum). He chairs the board of the Canada-Minnesota Business Council and is a past chair of the U.S. Feed Grains Council. He serves on the board and executive committee of the Children's Theatre Company and belongs to the Council on Foreign Relations. Johnson graduated from Yale University, undertook graduate study as a Rhodes Scholar at Oxford University, and attended Yale Law School.

Mercy Karanja has had more than 20 years experience in agriculture and rural development. She served for 16 years in the Ministry of Agriculture, leaving at the level of assistant director in 1998 to join the Kenya National Farmers Union. In her current position she is involved in all aspects of farm policy, including trade and the place of biotechnology in agriculture. She is currently preparing the African position for the upcoming second World Food Summit.

Manfred Kern studied zoology, biochemistry, genetics and related sciences at Germany's Johannes Gutenberg University, where he conducted research on brain aging in insects. In 1984 he joined the biological research center of Hoechst AG/Frankfurt, where he was responsible for insect-resistance management and integrated crop management. In 1994 he joined the biological research department at AgrEvo GmbH and worked on insect physiology/pharmacology and genetically modified plants. He currently heads Global Technology Communication within the Technology Strategy & Resources unit of Aventis CropScience.

Elizabeth King is a lead economist in the World Bank's Development Research Group and she serves as the research group's representative to the Bank's Education Sector Board and alternate representative to the Gender Sector Board. She is the task manager of a study of the impact of education reforms involving decentralization and privatization in a number of developing countries. She has worked on development issues in several countries in Africa, Asia, and Latin America. Before joining the Bank, she taught economics at the University of the Philippines, Tulane University, and the University of California at Los Angeles.

Wilberforce Kisamba-Mugerwa is the minister of agriculture, animal industry and fisheries in the Government of Uganda and a member of Parliament. He is also a senior research associate with Makerere Institute of Social Research, Makerere University, in Kampala. He holds a doctorate in agricultural economics and has a strong background in research, with particular interest in the management of natural resources for sustainable use and food security. He is a member of various research networks and regional and international associations.

Klaus Leisinger has been the vice president, delegate of the Board of Trustees, and executive director of the Novartis Foundation since 1990. He is also professor of development sociology at the University of Basel and serves as adviser to various national and international organizations dealing with sustainable development. Before joining the Novartis Foundation, Leisinger headed Ciba Pharmaceuticals' department of developing-country relations. He studied economics and social sciences at the University of Basel, Switzerland. His postgraduate work focused on health policy, international development, and private investment in developing countries.

An expert on global poverty, Michael Lipton's career has involved research in numerous countries in Asia and Africa. He conducted recent reviews of poverty for the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations and the International Fund for Agricultural Development. His books include Why Poor People Stay Poor: Urban Bias and World Development, New Seeds and Poor People (with Richard Longhurst), and Successes in Anti-Poverty. He is also coauthor of the Nuffield Council on Bioethics report, Genetically Modified Crops: The Ethical and Social Issues. In 1988-90 he directed IFPRI's Food Consumption and Nutrition Program.

Alex McCalla is best known for his research on international trade, an area in which he has published extensively. His work has been honored by the American Agricultural Economics Association, which presented him with its Quality of Communication Award in 1979 and Quality of Research Discovery Award in 1982, and elected him a fellow in 1988. Throughout his academic career McCalla was associated with the University of California, Davis, where he served as dean of the College of Agricultural and Environmental Sciences, associate director of the California Agricultural Experiment Station, and founding dean of the Graduate School of Management. He also directed the Agriculture and Natural Resources Department at the World Bank, chaired the Technical Advisory Committee of the Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research, and was a founding member and co-convenor of the International Agricultural Trade Research Consortium.

Charlotte McClain joined the South African Human Rights Commission in August 1999. She focuses on socioeconomic rights and is responsible for Mpumalanga Province. She has been serving on the Commission's Children's Rights and Disability committees since 1997. McClain has always been involved with human rights issues, particularly for children and people with special needs. She was project officer on child protection for the United Nations Children's Fund. She helped draft provincial policy for street children in South Africa and convened a team to establish a national register for sexual offenders against children. She is a member of the South African Law Commission Project Committee on sexual offences by and against children, and was legal adviser to the Disability Desk in the Office of the Deputy President during 1996. She is the chair of the board of RAPCAN (Resources Aimed at the Prevention of Child Abuse and Neglect).

Ruth Meinzen-Dick grew up in a village in a semi-arid part of India, where she came to appreciate the importance of water and natural resources. She moved to the United States to undertake higher education, ultimately receiving her Ph.D. in development sociology from Cornell University. She joined IFPRI in 1989. Her current research focuses on the role of collective action in managing natural resources such as land, water, and trees; the various rights people have to these resources; the related gender issues; and the impact these factors have on people's livelihood strategies.

William H. Meyers is currently on leave from his position as professor of economics at Iowa State University, where he has worked since 1979. Prior to joining FAO he was a visiting consultant at the World Bank, interim director of Iowa State University's Center for Agricultural and Rural Development and codirector of its Food and Agricultural Policy Research Institute, and executive director of the Midwest Agribusiness Trade Research and Information Center. He has also served as an agricultural economist at the Economic Research Service of the U.S. Department of Agriculture, a research fellow at the International Rice Research Institute, and a visiting professor at the University of Kiel. Throughout his career he has been an active international consultant, working on or managing policy assistance projects in a number of developing and transition economies.

Geoff Miller is the principal of GCM Strategic Services, an agribusiness consulting company based in Australia. He is also a non-executive director of a number of agribusiness and investment companies. Miller spent much of his 27-year career in the Australian civil service in the Bureau of Agricultural Economics, including 4 years as director, publishing widely in the fields of commodity economics, trade, and development. He went on to serve as director of the Economic Planning Advisory Council, associate secretary of the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade, and secretary of the Department of Primary Industries and Energy. He served on many government boards, including those of the Australian Wheat Board and the Australian Wool Corporation.

Solita Monsod is a professor of economics at the School of Economics, University of the Philippines, and the chair of the Philippine Human Development Network, an NGO that does research advocacy on sustainable human development. Monsod served as minister of economic planning in the Philippine Government from 1986 to 1989. She was named Cabinet Secretary of the Year in 1988 and 1989. Monsod has served on high-level committees such as the United Nations Committee for Development Planning. She is a columnist for a major newspaper and a commentator for a television news program in the Philippines. Monsod is a member of the IFPRI Board of Trustees.

Harris Mule is a development economist and policy analyst. During his international development career he has served as a planner in the Kenyan ministries of agriculture and planning, chief economist in the Ministry of Planning, and permanent secretary in the Ministry of Finance and Planning. He has also served as an assistant president of economic planning at the International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD). During the last fifteen years, he has worked as an economic consultant in the fields of macroeconomic policy, economic governance, and agricultural development with several international organizations, including the World Bank, African Development Bank, and IFAD. Mule has also been involved in initiatives to strengthen capacity for policy formulation and analysis through organizations such as the African Capacity Building Foundation in Zimbabwe, African Futures in Cote d'Ivoire, African Economic Research Consortium in Kenya, and the East and Central Africa Programme on Agricultural Policy Analysis in Uganda.

Chair of the 2020 Vision Initiative's International Advisory Committee

Biosketch coming.

Poul Nielson has been involved in Danish and European politics and policymaking since the mid 1960s. He has served as the Danish minister of energy and the minister for development cooperation, a member of the Danish Parliament, and the chair of the Social Democratic Foreign Affairs Committee. He also held corporate and academic posts, serving as CEO of LD-Energy Inc. and assistant professor in the Danish School of Public Administration. He became a member of the European Commission in 1999.

Biosketch coming.

In addition to his current academic and research positions at Wellesley College and Harvard University, Paarlberg has served as a visiting professor of government at Harvard and a legislative aide in the U.S. Senate. He has been a member of the Board of Directors of Winrock International, a member of the Emerging Markets Advisory Committee at the US Department of Agriculture, and a consultant to the National Intelligence Council, US Agency for International Development, IFPRI, and the World Bank. Paarlberg's principal research interests are international agricultural and environmental policy. He is the author of numerous books, including ones on food as a weapon, US foreign economic policy, and international agricultural trade negotiations.

Rajul Panyda-Lorch, a citizen of Kenya of Indian origin, joined IFPRI in 1987. Prior to heading IFPRI's 2020 Vision Initiative, Pandya-Lorch served as special assistant to IFPRI's director general. Her article cowritten with Per Pinstrup-Andersen, "Enough Food for Future Generations?," was selected as one of the best articles from the first 10 years of the magazine Choices, and the Foundation for Environmental Conservation awarded Pandya-Lorch and Pinstrup-Andersen the 1996 Best Paper Prize for their article "Food for All in 2020: Can the World Be Fed Without Damaging the Environment?" in the journal Environmental Conservation. Her research focuses on trends in and prospects for global food security, and on policies to alleviate and prevent food insecurity, poverty, and environmental degradation. Rajul received her M.P.A. degree from Princeton University.

Supachai Panitchpakdi assumes the post of director general of the World Trade Organization on September 1, 2002. He has held several prominent positions in the Thai government, including deputy finance minister, minister of commerce, and deputy prime minister. In these positions he was in charge of Thailand's participation in the Uruguay Round of trade negotiations and played an instrumental role in drafting Thailand's major economic policies. Panitchpakdi has also held top-level positions in the private sector, including president of the Thai Military Bank and chair of Nava Finance and Securities.

A specialist on the effects of climate change, Martin Parry has directed the Jackson Environment Initiative (JEI) since 1996, first at University College London and now at the University of East Anglia (UEA). At UEA Parry also serves as professor of environmental science. His other current positions include chair of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change's Task Group on Scenarios for Climate Impact Assessment and member of the Scientific Advisory Committee of the United Nations Environment Programme's Climate Impacts and Responses Programme. He has won a number of awards, including the Order of the British Empire in 1998 for services to the environment and the World Meteorological Organisation's Gerbier-Mumm International Award in 1993 for contributions to research on climate change.

Prabhu Pingali heads a group of 15 economists and other social scientists that assess the long-term prospects for modern wheat and maize technologies and their impact in the developing world. He has 20 years of experience in assessing the extent and impact of technical change in developing-country agriculture in Asia, Africa, and Latin America. Before his current position he was an agricultural economist at the International Rice Research Institute and an economist in the World Bank's Agriculture and Rural Development Department. Pingali is president-elect of the International Association of Agricultural Economists. He co-chairs the Millennium Ecosystem Assessment Panel's working group on future scenarios. He has received several international awards for his work.

Per Pinstrup-Andersen joined IFPRI as its director general in 1992. Prior to this he was director of the Cornell Food and Nutrition Policy Program, professor of food economics at Cornell University, and a member of the Technical Advisory Committee to the CGIAR. Pinstrup-Andersen has also held research and directorship positions at other Future Harvest centers. He is a fellow of the American Agricultural Economics Association and the American Association for the Advancement of Science and the recipient of honorary doctoral degrees from Tamil Nadu Veterinary and Animal Sciences University in India, the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich, the University of Aberdeen, U.K., and Wageningen University in the Netherlands. His awards include the Distinguished Alumnus of the Economics Institute of the University of Colorado and Oklahoma State University, the Charles A. Black Award for outstanding record of research and communication, and the Danish Agronomy Prize. He is honorary professor at the Tashkent State University in Uzbekistan and a Distinguished Professor at Wageningen University.

Jules Pretty is a professor at the Center for Environment and Society (CES), a transdisciplinary research center at the University of Essex, UK. Prior to joining CES, he served as director of sustainable agriculture at the International Institute for Environment and Development (IIED) in London. At IIED he was one of the early innovators in the development of participatory methodologies for both research and community-based development. He is the author of a number of books on agriculture and the environment, a trustee of the Farmers World Network and The Pesticides Trust, and an adviser to government and the private sector. He is a member of the UK Advisory Committee on Releases to the Environment.

Courage Emmanuel Kobla Quashigah (Maj. Rtd.) became Ghana's minister of food and agriculture in February 2001. He has been a member of Ghana's New Patriotic Party since 1992, and served as its national organizer from 1996 to 2000.

Prior to joining IFPRI, Agnes Quisumbing worked at the World Bank, Yale University, and the International Rice Research Institute (IRRI). While conducting research for Yale and IRRI, she lived in rice-growing villages in the Philippines for several months collecting information on gender differences in inheritance. She describes herself as equally comfortable running regressions as talking with women farmers about their lives. Her research interests include intrahousehold resource allocation, interventions to increase women's incomes and food security, intergenerational transfers, property rights, and land reform. Quisumbing received her Ph.D. in economics from the University of the Philippines.

K. Rajarathinavelu, a smallholder farmer owning 2.28 hectares of land, has been farming for 22 years. Paddy is the main crop grown on his farm. He has adopted modern varieties of paddy and applied the associated inputs such as bio-pesticides and bio-fertilizers. On unirrigated lands he grows pulses and sorghum. He lives with his wife, two children, and his parents in Pennathur village near Vellore, Tamil Nadu, India. He possesses a bachelor's degree in commerce.

Johannes Rau became president of Germany in 1999. His political career in the Social Democratic Party (SPD) has spanned more than 47 years in party, parliament, and government posts. For 20 of those years he served as minister president of North-Rhine/Westphalia, the most populous state in Germany. Rau led his party to decisive victories in numerous state elections in the 1980s and 1990s. He has stood as his party's candidate for chancellor of Germany. Earlier in his political career, he was minister of science and education, and during his ministerial tenure he established six universities, including Germany's first distance-learning university. His other posts have included deputy member of the Governing Council of the Synod of the Protestant Church in Rhineland and chairman of the Protestant Youth Publishing House.

Michael Rewald has worked in overseas development for the past twenty years, mainly with NGOs. He has been with CARE since 1990, working both in country offices and in CARE USA headquarters in Atlanta. At the field level Rewald has managed a variety of rehabilitation and development projects and worked as director of programs in both CARE Ethiopia and CARE Bangladesh. For the past year he has been the director of CARE's Partnership and Household Livelihood Security Unit in the Program Division of CARE USA. The PHLS Unit deals with cross-cutting issues such as program design, monitoring and evaluation, partnership, and the household livelihood security framework, as well as with oversight for CARE's programs using food resources.

Frank Rijsberman has 20 years experience as a natural resource planner in water-related projects in developing, transition, and developed economies. He has consulted for numerous international and bilateral organizations, including the World Bank, the U.S. Agency for International Development, the United Nations Development Programme, the Inter-American Development Bank, and the Dutch and French governments. He cofounded Resource Analysis, a research and consulting firm in the Netherlands that provides services in water and environmental management. Rijsberman has been involved in international developments in water policy since 1992. In 1998 he was appointed deputy director of the World Water Commission's World Water Vision Unit, which was charged with the development of a world water vision. He is coauthor of the World Water Vision report and editor of the companion technical volume.

Mark Rosegrant worked as a visiting lecturer at the University of the Philippines and a policy analyst with the Philippine Ministry of Agriculture before he joined IFPRI as a research fellow in 1980. Rosegrant's current research interests include water resource allocation policy; irrigation investment policy; sources of agricultural productivity growth; agricultural pricing policies; government investment behavior; and global food supply, demand, and trade. Rosegrant received M.A. and Ph.D. degrees in public policy studies from the University of Michigan.

Gabriel Rugalema has a background in crop science, resource and environmental economics, and development studies. He has worked as an academic in Tanzania and The Netherlands. He is currently seconded by UNAIDS as senior policy adviser to the United Nations Development Programme's Regional Project on HIV and Development Project for Sub-Saharan Africa.

Pedro Sanchez has been ICRAF's director general since 1991. He chairs the CGIAR Inter-Center Working Group on Climate Change and represents the CGIAR on the Soil Fertility Initiative for Africa. He founded the CGIAR's Systemwide Alternatives to Slash-and-Burn Programme. Sanchez is coeditor-in-chief of Agroforestry Systems and professor emeritus of soil science and forestry at North Carolina State University. A native of Cuba, his professional career has been dedicated to improving the management of tropical soils and the multidisciplinary management of natural resources for food security.

Wen Simei was the founding dean of the College of Economics and Trade at South China Agricultural University, where he teaches and directs the Institute of Economic Development. He is also professor and director of the Guangdong Center for Asia-Pacific Economic Studies, a cross-institutional organization under the provincial government. His current research focuses on the diffusion of new technologies in Chinese agriculture, agricultural marketing, and trade. He serves on several government advisory committees related to higher education and has been a visiting professor at several universities in the US and elsewhere. He has also served as an international fellow at the Kellogg Foundation.

Clare Short was a former civil servant at the Home Office before she became a member of Parliament for the Midlands constituency of Birmingham Ladywood, a position she has held since 1983. In 1996-1997 she was the opposition spokesperson on overseas development in the House of Commons. She was shadow minister for women from 1993 to 1995 and shadow secretary of state for transport from 1995 to 1996. She has been the opposition spokesperson on environmental protection, social security, and employment. She has also served as a member of the Home Affairs Select Committee and chair of the All-Party Group on Race Relations. A member of the National Executive Committee (NEC) of the Labour Party since 1988, she has served as chair of the NEC Women's Committee and chair of the NEC International Committee. She has been chair of the Human Rights Committee of the Socialist International since 1996.

In addition to managing a consulting firm in Sierra Leone, Dunstan Spencer is a member of Sierra Leone's National Food Security Committee and National Policy Advisory Committee. His previous assignments include teaching and research posts in Liberia, Niger, Nigeria, and Sierra Leone. He was a senior lecturer at the University of Sierra Leone, director of the Research and Development Department at the West Africa Rice Development Association, principal economist at the Sahelian Center of the International Crops Research Institute for the Semi-Arid Tropics, and director of the Resource and Crop Management Division of the International Institute of Tropical Agriculture.

In addition to directing the World Bank's Rural Development Department, Robert Thompson is a senior advisor at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. Prior to joining the Bank in 1998, he served as president and CEO of Winrock International Institute for Agricultural Development, dean of agriculture and professor of agricultural economics at Purdue University, assistant secretary for economics at the US Department of Agriculture (USDA), and senior staff economist for food and agriculture on the President's Council of Economic Advisers. He has won several awards, including the US Department of Agriculture's Justin Smith Morrill award for leadership and significant contribution to food and agricultural science and the National Forum for Agriculture's Agricultural Vision Award.

Jennifer Thomson is a professor of microbiology at the University of Cape Town, South Africa. She was a postdoctoral fellow at Harvard Medical School, visiting scientist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and associate professor in the Department of Genetics at the University of Witwatersrand. Before joining the faculty at the University of Cape Town, she was director of the Laboratory for Molecular and Cell Biology at CSIR, South Africa's largest science and technology research organization. Thomson's research focuses on biological control of plant pests and diseases and the cellulase systems of rumen anaerobic bacteria. She cofounded South African Women in Science and Engineering.

Klemens van de Sand's career in international development spans 25 years. He began as the representative of the Konrad-Adenauer-Foundation in Indonesia and then joined the German Federal Ministry of Economic Cooperation and Development. His posts in the ministry included deputy director general (Policy and Planning), Human Rights Commissioner, and chair of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development/Development Assistance Committee Working Group on Participatory Development and Good Governance. He has been assistant president of IFAD, responsible for Programme Management, since 1997.

Stewart Wallis' career began in marketing and sales in the U.K., followed by seven years at the World Bank working on industrial development in East Asia. He then joined Robinson Packaging in U.K., spending nine years there, five of them as managing director. In 1992 he joined Oxfam GB, where he has overall responsibility for its role in 70 countries worldwide.

Heidemarie Wieczorek-Zeul became the German Federal Minister of Economic Cooperation and Development in 1998. She began her political career in the Social Democratic Party (SPD) in the mid-1960s, becoming city counselor in Russelsheim in 1968. Since then she has held a number of administrative and political posts, including member of the European Parliament, member of the SPD's presiding body, SPD spokesperson on European policy, and deputy chairperson of the SPD.

Trained as a lawyer, Chee Yoke Ling works on sustainable development issues, global justice and equity issues, and the effects of globalization on developing countries. Currently she is a legal advisor for the Third World Network on international law. Since 1993 she has worked closely with key developing-country negotiators, scientists, and NGOs to campaign for biosafety in genetic engineering. She is also involved in international biodiversity issues. She was a member of a Malaysian task force that worked on two national laws related to biosafety and the regulation of access to genetic resources. Yoke Ling has served as law lecturer at the University of Malaya and as the executive secretary of Sahabat Alam Malaysia (Friends of the Earth, Malaysia). She participated in the process leading up to the United Nations Conference on Environment and Development in 1992 (Earth Summit), and she continues to be involved in the work of the Commission on Sustainable Development and the Convention on Biological Diversity.

In her current position as joint director of research at Maharashtra Hybrid Seeds Co. (Mahyco) in India, Usha Barwale Zehr is responsible for research on plant biotechnology, technology transfer to farmers, and technology transfer from collaborators. She serves on a number of boards, including the M.S. Swaminathan Research Foundation and the Mahyco Research Foundation, and is a member of the Technical Advisory Committee of the Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research. She is involved in the founding or functioning of several charitable and educational organizations, including the Shri Ganapati Netralaya, an eye hospital for the rural poor in the state of Maharashtra.