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Tag: GIS

Gerald Blasch

Written by Emma Orchardson on . Posted in Uncategorized.

Gerald Blasch is a Crop Disease Geo-Spatial Data Scientist whose work focuses on research for development (R4D) of remote sensing and geospatial solutions for crop disease early warning systems. He holds a PhD in Agricultural Remote Sensing from Technical University Berlin, Germany, and an MSc in Physical Geography from University Regensburg, Germany.

Blasch has 13 years of research and consultancy experience on both international and national projects in the agriculture and development sectors of several countries (e.g. Australia, China, Germany, Mexico, and the UK). As researcher, he developed remote sensing and GIS tools for precision and conservation agriculture, digital soil mapping, and environmental monitoring during his Post-Doc (Newcastle University, UK) and PhD studies (GFZ Potsdam, Germany), and consultancy activities (CIMMYT, Mexico). As a GIS expert (GIZ, Germany; SEMARNAT, Mexico) he built and managed a GIS for waste management, including capacity building and knowledge transfer.

Kindie Tesfaye Fantaye

Written by Emma Orchardson on . Posted in Uncategorized.

Kindie Tesfaye is a Senior Scientist based in Ethiopia. He has more than 15 years of experience in executing and managing climate, crop modeling and GIS related projects for agricultural research and development in developing countries.

During his time at CIMMYT, he has developed a system of data acquisition and quality control for climate, crop modeling and geospatial analysis. He has applied systems analysis, cropping systems modeling and geospatial analysis tools for yield gap analysis, targeting of climate smart technologies and climate change studies across different scales. In collaboration with partners, he has also developed a digital agro-climate advisory system that provides decision support to smallholder farmers.

Diego Noleto Luz Pequeno

Written by Emma Orchardson on . Posted in Uncategorized.

Diego Pequeno is a wheat crop modeler based within the Sustainable Agrifood Systems (SAS) program. He also works on a number of projects in collaboration with CIMMYT’s Global Wheat Program and a number of external organizations.

His work focuses mainly on the simulation of trait impact scenarios to guide breeding towards the most effective traits and trait combinations for global wheat production. He also works to determine the importance of a single trait or the best combination of traits under different climate change scenarios for different cropping systems in key wheat growing regions. He uses high-performance computer clusters to run gridded crop model simulations for current and future climate scenarios on a global scale.

Jordan Chamberlin

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Jordan Chamberlin is a CIMMYT Spatial Economist based in Kenya. He holds a PhD in Agricultural Economics from Michigan State University and an MA in Geography from Arizona State University.

He conducts applied research on smallholder farm households, rural development and policies designed to promote welfare and productivity improvements.

Dave Hodson

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David Hodson is a Senior Scientist with CIMMYT. He has over 20 years of experience executing and managing GIS-related projects and programs for agricultural research and development in developing countries.

For the last 10 years he has worked on developing and coordinating a Global Wheat Rust Monitoring System in response to the threat posed by wheat stem rust Ug99. The wheat rust monitoring system now covers approximately 40 countries in Africa, Asia and Latin America. He also coordinates a surveillance system for Maize Lethal Necrosis in Eastern and Southern Africa.

In addition, Hodson is involved in projects using advanced modeling for wheat rust early warning, and also on improved pathogen and host diagnostics using molecular tools. His research focuses on the surveillance and monitoring of emerging cereal disease threats and the application of geo-spatial technology for improved decision support.

Kai Sonder

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Kai Sonder is currently the Geographic Information System (GIS) Laboratory Manager. The unit provides spatial data and analysis, targeting and foresight work and agro meteorology to the organization. It also provides training on GIS to all of CIMMYT’s scientists and projects, as well as partners applied to development-oriented agricultural research on maize, wheat and conservation agriculture in developing countries in Africa, Asia and Latin America.