Hannes Dempewolf is Senior Scientist and Head of Global Initiatives at the Crop Trust. He leads the Crop Trust’s project “Adapting agriculture to climate change: collecting, protecting and preparing crop wild relatives” and is responsible for developing, driving and sustaining initiatives and projects that are of strategic importance for the Crop Trust. As such, he works at the interface of science, policy and resource mobilization.
Hannes studied Plant Science at the University of Edinburgh and the Royal Botanic Gardens Edinburgh in Scotland and completed his PhD training in Botany at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver, Canada. Before joining the Crop Trust, he has led several field research projects on plant genetic resources in Peru, the Caribbean, Kenya and Ethiopia. His scientific interest focuses on the evolution, maintenance and conservation of agro-biodiversity, the importance of such diversity for farming communities and the role it can play for sustainable development and food security in times of a rapidly changing climate.