Plenary Speakers

Alison Bentley’s research combines genetics and genomics to develop and deliver new tools and technology to improve plant breeding, crop production and adaptation to climate change. Alison served as Director of the Global Wheat Program from 2020 – 2023. Prior to joining CIMMYT in November 2020, Alison worked in the UK focused on translation of fundamental scientific breakthroughs into tangible impacts for plant breeding. She has a doctorate in agricultural science and PhD in agriculture from The University of Sydney, Australia.

Dr. Sylvain Charlebois is a Professor in food distribution and policy in the Faculty of Management at Dalhousie University in Halifax. He is also the Senior Director of the Agri-food Analytics Lab, at the same university. He is as well the former Dean of the Faculty of Management at Dalhousie University. Before joining Dalhousie, he was affiliated with the University of Guelph’s Arrell Food Institute, which he co-founded.

Known as “The Food Professor”, his current research interest lies in the broad area of food distribution, security and safety. He is one of the world’s most cited scholars in food supply chain management, food value chains and traceability. Since 2020, he co-hosts The Food Professor podcast, discussing issues in the food, foodservice, grocery and restaurant industries. The podcast is ranked in the top 10 most listened management podcast in Canada.

Every year since 2012, he has published the now highly anticipated Canadian Food Price Report, which provides an overview of food price trends for the coming year. He has authored seven books on global food systems, notably one titled Poutine Nation, exploring the journey of the iconic Canadian dish from it’s humble beginning to international success. He has also published over 750 peer-reviewed journal articles in several academic and professional publications. Furthermore, his research has been featured in several newspapers and media groups, including The Economist, the New York Times, the Boston Globe, the Wall Street Journal, Washington Post, BBC, NBC, ABC, Fox News, Foreign Affairs, the Globe & Mail, the National Post and the Toronto Star.

Dr. Charlebois is an editor for the Trends in Food Science Technology journal. He sits on company boards, and supports many organizations as a special advisor, including some publicly traded companies. Charlebois is also a member of the Scientific Council of the Business Scientific Institute, based in Luxemburg. He conducts policy analysis, evaluation, and demonstration projects for government agencies and major foundations focusing on agricultural policies and community development both in Canada and in development settings. Dr. Charlebois is a member of the Global Food Traceability Centre‘s Advisory Board based in Washington DC, and a member of the National Scientific Committee of the Canadian Food Inspection Agency (CFIA) in Ottawa. He has testified on several occasions before parliamentary committees on food policy-related issues as an expert witness. He has been asked to act as an advisor on food and agricultural policies in many Canadian provinces, in the United States, Brazil, Austria, Italy, France, Belgium, China, Great Britain, Finland and the Netherlands.  

Email: sylvain.charlebois@dal.ca

Twitter: @FoodProfessor

Dr. Sylvie Cloutier is a Canadian scientist. She is a specialist in molecular genetics at Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada’s Ottawa Research and Development Centre and an adjunct professor at the University of Ottawa. She has co-led two Genome Canada Large Scale Applied Research projects of $11M each and has been involved in over 110 published research papers and made contributions to many books.

Read more about Dr. Cloutier’s work here.

Dr. Ksenia Krasileva is an Assistant Professor of Plant and Microbial Biology at the Berkeley Rausser College of Natural Resources.

Dr. Krasileva’s lab is an interdisciplinary group of people with a common interest in genomics and host-microbe interactions. Her vision is to combine the latest technologies (such as sequencing, synthetic biology, genome editing) with research to answer fundamental questions about genome evolution, eukaryotic innate immune systems.

Read more about Dr. Krasileva’s work here.

Navin Ramankutty is Professor and Canada Research Chair in Data Science for Sustainable Global Food Systems at the School of Public Policy and Global Affairs and the Institute for Resources, Environment, and Sustainability at the University of British Columbia. He received a bachelor’s degree in mechanical engineering from the PSG College of Technology in India, a master’s degree in Atmospheric Sciences from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, and a PhD in Land Resources from the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

His interest and training shifted over the years from engineering to climate science, global ecosystem science, and land & food system science. His research today uses global Earth observations, data science, geospatial analysis and ecosystem models to understand how humans use and modify the Earth’s land surface for agriculture, evaluate the global environment consequences, and explore solutions to the problem of feeding humanity with minimal global environmental footprint. He is a co-chair of the Scientific Steering Committee of the Global Land Programme.

He was a lead author of the Millennium Ecosystem Assessment report, a contributing author of the Fourth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, and contributing author of the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services. He is an Associate Editor of the journals Environmental Research Letters, and CABI Agriculture and Bioscience, and was formerly an Associate Editor of the journals Global Food Security and Global Ecology and Biogeography. He is an Aldo Leopold Leadership Fellow. He was awarded the 2020 Wihuri International Prize for his work on sustainable global food systems.

Dr. Tittlemier received her BSc at the University of Manitoba and her PhD in environmental analytical chemistry from Carleton University, Ottawa, Canada.   She has been working in the area of analytical chemistry and food safety in the federal government since 2002, and is currently a research scientist and program manager in the Grain Research Laboratory with the Canadian Grain Commission since 2010.  Dr. Tittlemier’s program is responsible for research on the factors that affect chemical contaminants in grain.  Her work dives into many aspects of mycotoxin, pesticide residue, and heavy metal occurrence in grain, including the fate of these contaminants during processing, plus methods of analysis including sampling best practices.

Dr. Tittlemier is a member of the expert roster of the Joint (FAO/WHO) Expert Committee on Food Additives, on the executive of the International Pierre Gy Sampling Association, as well as a member of the Canadian delegations for the Codex Committee on Contaminants in Food and Codex Committee on Methods of Analysis and Sampling.  She has chaired or co-chaired the Food Safety and Microbiology Technical Committee of the Cereals & Grains Association since 2015, and is on the editorial board for a number of food safety-related journals including World Mycotoxin Journal, Mycotoxin Research, Food Additives & Contaminants.