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26th York Distinguished Lecturer Series
Tuesday, February 22, 2011 • 2:00pm
 Dr.
Gebisa Ejeta
Distinguished Professor and
2009 World Food Prize Laureate
Topic of Lecture:
"The New Global Food Security Agenda:
It Will Test Our Will!"
President’s Room
Emerson Alumni Hall
1938 West University Avenue
University of Florida, Gainesville
Lecture is free and open to the public
Gebisa Ejeta was born and raised in a small rural
community in west-central Ethiopia. He completed his early
education in his native country including a BS in Plant
Sciences from Alemaya College in 1973. He attended graduate
school at Purdue University earning his Masters (1976) and
PhD (1978) in Plant Breeding & Genetics. In March 1979,
Gebisa joined the International Crop Research Institute for
the Semi-arid Tropics (ICRISAT) and conducted seminal
sorghum research in Sudan for five years. In January 1984,
Dr. Ejeta returned to Purdue University as an Assistant
Professor in the Department of Agronomy. Since then, he has
led a comprehensive educational and research program at
Purdue with emphasis on African agricultural research and
development. He currently holds the position of
Distinguished Professor of Plant Breeding & Genetics and
International Agriculture at Purdue University.
Professor Ejeta has served on numerous science and program
review panels, technical committees, and advisory boards of
major research and development organizations including the
international agricultural research centers (IARCs), the
Rockefeller Foundation, the Food and Agricultural
Organization (FAO) of the United Nations, and a number of
national and regional organizations in Africa. He was a
member of the team that launched the Alliance for Green
Revolution in Africa, a joint effort of the Rockefeller and
Gates Foundation. Dr. Ejeta has served the Consultative
Group for International Agricultural Research (CGIAR), the
largest publicly funded agricultural research consortium in
the world as member of its Science Council (2008-2010) and
currently as a member of its Consortium Board. He is also a
board member of Sasakawa Africa Program. Dr. Ejeta was
recently designated special advisor to USAID Administrator
Dr. Rajiv Shah.
Dr. Ejeta is a Fellow of the American Association for the
Advancement of Science, a Fellow of the Crop Science Society
of America, and a Fellow of the American Society of
Agronomy. Among his many awards, Gebisa Ejeta was the
recipient of the 2009 World Food Prize; and a national medal
of honor from the President of Ethiopia.
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