Bio

Stephan Weise is Deputy Director General for Research at Bioversity International. He is in his 4th year at Bioversity International, where he initially managed the Commodities for Livelihoods Programme, developing commodity-based innovation system approaches; promoting the emergence of a culture of innovation at the local level; encouraging the sharing of knowledge, information and technologies across stakeholders; and integrating the generation of income with sustainable natural resource management practices. He also worked for 16 years with the International Institute of Tropical Agriculture (IITA) on a variety of programmes in West and Central Africa linked to enhancing productivity of smallholder farming systems, systems diversity and sustainability, and public-private partnership and innovation platforms. Stephen holds a PhD in agricultural sciences from the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Zurich.