Esther Carrillo joined CIMMYT in 2011. Since 2019 she serves as General Counsel and Director of Legal Department, a service area dedicated to supporting CIMMYT’s mission by providing legal advice to foster sound decision-making in all areas of its global operations. Striving to be a problem-solver committed to helping resolve issues in a cost-effective, practical, expeditious, reliable, professional, and efficient manner.
A Mexican national, Carrillo is an experienced and seasoned attorney with over twenty years of experience in international procurement, corporate, international and administrative law, government relations, labor relations, project and contract management, and compliance.
Carrillo holds a J.D. from the University of Guadalajara and a LL.M. in International Law from the University of Heidelberg.
Kick Geels is CIMMYT’s Director of Finance since 2017. In his role, Geels aims to increase the efficiency of the finance function and improve client and service orientation, while maintaining robust internal control frameworks to ensure compliance with donor and statutory regulations. Prior to this appointment, he served as CIMMYT’s Regional Finance Manager. Previously, he worked for nine years at Syngenta, in areas such as compliance, Sarbanes-Oxley, SAP/ERP implementation, process improvement, programs and multiple accounting functions. He was also Finance Statutory Head, responsible for 13 countries.
A Dutch national, he has been based in Mexico, The Netherlands, Panama and Switzerland. Geels’ original training was in law and he later earned a Master’s Degree in Internal Audit from the University of Amsterdam and a Master’s Degree in Finance from Vrije Universiteit (Amsterdam). He is a member of the CGIAR Corporate Services Executives (CSE) committee.
Govaerts is renowned for pioneering, implementing, and inspiring transformational changes for farmers and consumers in meeting the sustainable development challenges. He brings together multi-disciplinary science and development teams to integrate sustainable, multi-stakeholder and sector strategies that generate innovation and change in agri-food systems. His initiatives, excellence in science for impact and the partnerships he inspired have resulted in improved nutrition, nature conservation, and national and international resilience and food security.
His work is geared toward transforming subsistence agriculture and failed farming systems into productive and sustainable production units, and has worked in countries like Ethiopia, India and Mexico. Together with a group of scientists, trainers, extension agents, collaborative farmers and communications and technology specialists, Govaerts developed a vision inspired by Norman Borlaug’s motto “Take it to the Farmer”: combining the right seed with the right conservation agriculture production practice embedded in an integrated market while recognizing and integrating farmer knowledge.
Govaerts holds a PhD in Bioscience Engineering – Soil Science, a master’s degree in Soil Conservation and Tropical Agriculture, and a bachelor’s degree in Bioscience Engineering, all from Katholieke Universiteit Leuven, Belgium.
In 2003, Govaerts received the Development Cooperation Prize from the Belgian Federal Government. In 2014 he was awarded the Norman Borlaug Award for Field Research and Application — endowed by the Rockefeller Foundation and awarded by the World Food Prize — for the development of sustainable agricultural systems. In 2018 he received the Premio Tecnoagro, awarded by an organization of 2,500 Mexican farmers. He is a member of the Sustainable Development Solutions Network and A.D. White Professor-at-Large at Cornell University. In 2020, Govaerts was elected as Fellow by The American Society of Agronomy (ASA) for his outstanding contributions to the field of agronomy.
Arun Kumar Joshi is engaged in developing climate-resilient, high-yielding, nutritive wheat varieties for South Asia. In addition, he is engaged in various collaborations on climate-resilient agriculture and seed system. He has facilitated the development and release of more than five dozen wheat varieties in South Asia through a significant contribution to climate resilience, disease resistance, conservation agriculture, and Zinc rich biofortification. His research findings are published in 188 refereed journal articles, 212 extension articles and manuals, 10 books or book chapters, and 136 symposia proceedings, and has a patent.
Joshi, a former Professor of Banaras Hindu University, is a fellow of the three most prestigious science academies in India – the Indian National Science Academy (INSA), the National Academy of Science in India (NASI), and the National Academy of Agriculture Sciences (NAAS). In 2014, he was awarded the Jeanie Borlaug Laube WIT Mentor Award from the Borlaug Global Rust Initiative at Cornell University.
B.M. Prasanna is a Distinguished Scientist and Regional Director for Asia at CIMMYT.
Since 2010, Prasanna, as the Global Maize Program Director, has provided technical oversight for a wide range of multi-institutional projects focused on the development and deployment of elite, stress-resilient, and nutritionally enriched maize varieties across the tropics of sub-Saharan Africa, Asia, and Latin America. He has also spearheaded the application of innovative tools and technologies aimed at enhancing genetic gains and improving breeding efficiency.
Prasanna led the CGIAR Research Program MAIZE from 2015 till 2021, an alliance of over 300 research and development institutions globally. He has been at the forefront in tackling the challenges of maize lethal necrosis (MLN) disease in eastern Africa (since 2011), and the Fall Armyworm in Africa and Asia (since 2016 and 2018, respectively).
Together with an array of partners globally, Prasanna and the wider CGIAR team have formulated the OneCGIAR Plant Health Initiative in 2021. Prasanna is currently also serving as the Leader of the Plant Health Initiative, involving 10 CGIAR centers and over 80 national and international partners.
Recipient of several awards and recognitions, Prasanna has published over 200 research articles in various international journals of repute, and has a Scopus h-index of 46, and a Google Scholar h-index of 61.
Kevin Pixley is the Dryland Crops Program Director (DCP) and Wheat Program Director a.i. (GWP)
Pixley was formerly the Genetic Resources Program (GRP) director where he helped formulate, facilitate, and oversee inter-disciplinary strategies to enhance the relevance and impacts of wheat and maize research to improve livelihoods, especially for resource-poor farmers.
Pixley and his research team use genomics, phenomics and informatics to characterize and enhance the conservation and use of wheat and maize biodiversity through CIMMYT’s Seeds of Discovery initiative, where they explore the use of crop biodiversity to address novel opportunities, including enhanced sustainability of farming systems, improved nutritional or health outcomes or value-addition for farmers. They also look for opportunities to apply novel technologies to address needs of resource-poor farmers.
His current research includes:
1) The genomic characterization of maize and wheat germplasm bank diversity and enhancing the use of diversity in breeding
2) The use of novel breeding tools, especially gene editing, to complement traditional breeding techniques
3) The development of tools and approaches to enhance the use of genomics in teaching the use of biodiversity in plant breeding
4) The legal frameworks governing and opportunities promoting fair access and sharing of benefits from genetic resources
5) The role of provitamin A carotenoids (and other anti-oxidants) in maize grain towards reducing mycotoxin contamination of grain
6) Science and society, including how to ensure equitable opportunity for all to access the potential benefits of science
