Dr. Hasegawa is an executive researcher at the Institute for Agro-Environmental Sciences, NARO, Tsukuba, Japan. After graduating from Kyoto University, he worked as an assistant professor at Kyushu Tokai University and an associate professor at Hokkaido University before joining NARO in 2016.
He is a crop physiologist and specializes in environmental crop responses. He recently served as a Coordinating Lead Author of the Working Group II contribution to the IPCC Sixth Assessment Report.
Pierre-Marie Aubert is the head of the Agriculture & Food Policy Initiative at Iddri (Institut du développement durable et des relations internationales). With a background in landscape ecology and political sociology, his work focuses on food system scenario development. He combines for that a biophysical approach to food security functioning with a deep undertsanding of their socio-economic dimensions to identify policy levers and business solutions towards greater sustainability.
Ameenah Gurib-Fakim has been the Managing Director of the Centre International de Développement Pharmaceutique (CIDP) Research and Innovation as well as Professor of Organic Chemistry with an endowed chair at the University of Mauritius. Since 2001, she has served successively as Dean of the Faculty of Science and Pro Vice Chancellor (2004- 2010). She has also worked at the Mauritius Research Council as Manager for Research (1995-1997).
As a Founding Member of the Pan African Association of African Medicinal Plants, she co-authored the first ever African Herbal Pharmacopoeia. She has authored and co-edited 30 books, several book chapters and scientific articles in the field of biodiversity conservation and sustainable development. Elected Fellow of several academies and societies, Ms Gurib-Fakim received several international prizes including the 2007 l’Oreal-UNESCO Prize for Women in Science, the African Union Commission Award for Women in Science, 2009. On 05 June 2015, she was sworn in as the 6th President and the First Female President of the Republic of Mauritius and served in that capacity until March 2018.
In 2019, she received the ‘Trailblazing award for political leadership’ by the World Women Leaders Council in Iceland. In 2020, she was elected Honorary President of the International and Engineering Institute and received their 2020 5th IETI Annual Scientific Award. She also received the IAS-COMSTECH Ibrahim Memorial Award from the WIAS in Jordan. In 2021, she received the Benazir Bhutto Lifetime Achievement Award and appointed Distinguished Professor at the John Wesley School of Leadership at Carolina University, USA. In June 2016, she was in the Forbes List for the 100 ‘Most Powerful women in the world’ and 1st among the Top 100 Women in Africa Forbes List 2017, 2019. She is honoured as one of Foreign Policy’s 2015 Global Thinkers.
Rachel Bezner Kerr, is a Professor in Global Development at Cornell University (New York, USA). She does participatory research in Africa on agroecology, gender, climate change adaptation, food and nutrition security. She has published over 70 scientific articles, in journals such as Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, and Agriculture, Ecosystems and Environment. She is a Coordinating Lead Author for Chapter 5 (the ‘food chapter’) for the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change upcoming report on climate change impacts, vulnerabilities and adaptation. In 2019 she was co-author of a report on agroecology for the United Nations Committee for World Food Security. Her long-term participatory research is in collaboration with a farmer-led organization in Malawi, the Soils, Food and Healthy Communities organization.
Visiting scientist at CIRAD