Professor Sir Gordon Conway KCMG DL HonFREng FRS
Chief Scientific Adviser to the Department for International Development
Gordon Conway was appointed Chief Scientific Adviser to the Department for International Development at the beginning of 2005. He also holds the title of Professor of International Development at Imperial College, London.
Prior to that he was President of The Rockefeller Foundation from 1998 to 2004 and Vice-Chancellor of the University of Sussex and Chair of the Institute for Development Studies from 1992-1998.
He was educated at the Universities of Wales (Bangor), Cambridge, Trinidad and California (Davis).
His discipline is agricultural ecology. In the early 1960's, working in Sabah, North Borneo, he became one of the pioneers of sustainable agriculture. From 1970 to 1986, he was Professor of Environmental Technology at Imperial College, London. During this period he lived and worked in many countries in Asia and the Middle East. He then directed the sustainable agriculture program of the International Institute for Environment and Development in London before becoming Representative of the Ford Foundation in New Delhi from 1988 to 1992.
He was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society in 2004 and was made a Knight Commander of the Order of Saint Michael and Saint George in 2005. He is a Deputy Lieutenant of the County of East Sussex.
He is President of the Royal Geographical Society and Chair of Visiting Arts.
He has authored Unwelcome Harvest: agriculture and pollution (Earthscan, Island Press), The Doubly Green Revolution: Food for all in the 21st century (Penguin and University Press, Cornell); and Islamophobia: a challenge for us all (The Runnymede Trust).

Deborah Delmer
Deborah Delmer received her B.A. degree with honors in Bacteriology in 1963 from Indiana University and her Ph.D. in Cell Biology in 1968 from the University of California San Diego. Her first faculty position was at the MSU Plant Research Laboratory, where she held positions of Assistant and then Associate Professor and began her many studies on the biosynthesis of the plant cell wall. She subsequently held positions as a Principal Scientist at the ARCO Plant Cell Research Institute in Dublin CA, as Professor at The Hebrew University of Jerusalem and, more recently, as Professor and Chair of the Section of Plant Biology at UC Davis. Together with colleagues at Calgene, Inc., Delmer’s group was the first to identify plant homologs of bacterial genes that encode the catalytic subunit of the cellulose synthase, and much of her recent research at UC Davis focused on the role of this gene family in cellulose synthesis in plants. From 2002-2007, Delmer served as Associate Director for Food Security for the Rockefeller Foundation in New York City where she was charged with grant making and policy relating to the role biotechnology can play in advancing the improvement of crops for the developing world. In early 2007, Delmer retired from the Foundation and now works independently as a consultant on developing world agriculture and on issues surrounding biomass production. She is also serving part-time as a program director for a new program called BREAD funded through the US National Science Foundation and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. BREAD will support innovative research that addresses issues of importance to small-holder farmers in the developing world.

Delmer served as President of the American Society of Plant Biologists for the year 2000. In 2004, she received from the American Chemical Society the Anselme Payen Award in recognition of excellence in the science and chemical technology of cellulose. In 2004, she was also elected to membership in the US National Academy of Sciences. A more extensive Profile of Dr. Delmer’s career can be found at Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. USA 102: 15736-15738 (2005).

William Clark
Harvey Brooks Professor of International Science, Public Policy and Human Development
John F. Kennedy School of Government
Harvard University
William C. Clark is the Harvey Brooks Professor of International Science, Public Policy and Human Development at Harvard University’s John F. Kennedy School of Government. Trained as an ecologist, his research focuses on the interactions of environment, development and security concerns in international affairs, with a special emphasis on the role of science and technology in shaping those interactions. Clark is co-author of Adaptive Environmental Assessment and Management (Wiley, 1978) and Redesigning Rural Development (Hopkins, 1982); editor of the Carbon Dioxide Review (Oxford, 1982); and coeditor of Sustainable Development of the Biosphere (Cambridge, 1986), The Earth as Transformed by Human Action (Cambridge, 1990), Learning To Manage Global Environmental Risks (MIT, 2001), and Global Environmental Assessments: Information and Influence (MIT, 2006). He serves on the editorial boards of the Proceedings of the US National Academy of Sciences, and Annual Review of Environment and Natural Resources. Clark is a member of the U.S. National Academy of Sciences, where he serves on the Roundtable on Science and Technology for Sustainability and co-chaired the study Our Common Journey: A Transition Toward Sustainability (National Research Council, 1999). At Harvard, he co-directs the Sustainability Science Program at the University's Center for International Development. Clark is a recipient of the MacArthur Prize, the Humboldt Prize, and the Kennedy School's Carballo Award for excellence in teaching.

Martin Kropff
Rector Magnificus, Wageningen University
Vice-president, Wageningen University and Research Centre (Wageningen UR)
Prof. Martin Kropff took his masters in biology at Utrecht University and his PhD at Wageningen University, both cum laude. After his PhD he went to the Philippines to lead the international programme on systems analysis and simulation of the International Rice Research Institute for a period of four years. He returned to Wageningen University to become professor in, what now is called, the chair group of Crop and Weed Ecology. From 1998 to 2002 he was scientific director of the C.T. de Wit graduate school. In 2000 he was asked to become general director of the Plant Sciences Group of Wageningen UR, and in 2005 he joined the Executive Board as vice-president and Rector Magnificus.

Dr. Akinwumi Adesina
Vice President, Policy and Partnerships, Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa
Akin Adesina is Vice President (Policy and Partnerships) for the Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa (AGRA), a bold new entity established by the Rockefeller Foundation and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation with the goal of bringing a green revolution to Africa, and lifting millions of poor farmers out of poverty and food insecurity.
Dr. Adesina won the prestigious Rockefeller Foundation Social Science Research Fellowship in 1988, which initiated his career in international agricultural development. He is a distinguished agricultural economist, with over 20 years of professional experience. He has worked in several senior research positions within the international agricultural research and development arena. He has published over 70 articles in international journals, conference proceedings and books on issues of agricultural development in Africa and serves as reviewer for several international journals. He is currently the President of African Association of Agricultural Economists and is an Executive Board member of the International Association of Agricultural Economists. He helped to design, inspire and galvanize support of the international community behind the landmark Africa Fertilizer Summit, where 40 heads of states agreed to solve Africa’s fertilizer crisis in the drive towards an Africa green revolution.
Dr. Adesina received the Outstanding Black Agricultural Economist Award from the American Agricultural Economics Association in recognition of distinguished academic and management contribution to the field of agricultural economics and international agriculture. He was awarded on September 1, 2007 the prestigious Yara Prize for African Green Revolution, for his leadership on the green revolution for Africa, and his pioneering work with developing rural input suppliers networks that are now supplying affordable farm inputs to millions of poor farmers across Africa.
Dr Adesina has also been recently honored with the 2008 College of Agriculture Distinguished Agricultural Alumni Award by Purdue University in USA, for his inspiring leadership in spearheading transformative change in African Agriculture.

Dr. Pramod Kumar Aggarwal
National Professor, ICAR
Dr. Pramod Kumar Aggarwal is ICAR National Professor at the Indian Agricultural Research Institute, New Delhi and the Coordinator of the ICAR Network on Climate Change and Agriculture. He is also Secretary of the National Academy of Agricultural Sciences, India. He was the Coordinating Lead Author for agriculture for the Fourth Assessment Report of the IPCC. Dr Aggarwal is a member of the Editorial Board of ‘Agricultural Systems’ and ‘Outlook on Agriculture’. He is also a Fellow of the National Academy of Sciences, India, and National Academy of Agricultural Sciences, India. Dr Aggarwal was awarded Ph.D. in Life Sciences by the University of Indore in India and another Ph.D. in Agriculture and Environment by the Wageningen University, The Netherlands.
His major research interests are in the areas of impacts and adaptation to global environmental change, greenhouse gases, modelling agricultural systems, and yield forecasting.