keynote
Speakers
Dr. Shakuntala Haraksingh Thilsted
is CGIAR’s Director of Nutrition, Health and Food Security Impact Area Platform and a world-renowned nutrition expert known for her pioneering work on nutrition-sensitive approaches to fisheries and aquaculture in Bangladesh, India, Cambodia, Zambia, among many other countries. She received the 2021 World Food Prize for her influential work on nutrition, fish and aquatic food systems. She is part of the UN High-Level Panel of Experts on Food Security and Nutrition as well as the 2021 UN Food Systems Summit Vice-Chair for Action Track 4: Advance Equitable Livelihoods.
Dr. Essam Yassin Mohammed
is WorldFish's Director General and CGIAR's Senior Director of Aquatic Food Systems. He is a leading interdisciplinary systems thinker, researcher and policy adviser with deep roots in the economics of the ocean and fisheries. He is a member of several advisory bodies including the Group of Experts for the second cycle of the UN’s Regular Process for Global Reporting and Assessment of the State of the Marine Environment, including Socioeconomic Aspects.
Dato’ Adnan bin Hussain
is the twelfth Director General of the Department of Fisheries, Malaysia. He has extensive experience in the field of fisheries and marine resources having served the department in several positions over the past three decades. Prior to his appointment as the Director General, he was the Senior Director of Fisheries Biosecurity and Conservation and Protection divisions.
Dr. Christophe Béné
Béné is Principal Scientist and Senior Policy Advisor working with the Alliance of Bioversity International and CIAT, headquartered in Cali, Colombia. He is currently affiliated to the CGIAR Systems Transformation Science Group and seconded to the Wageningen Economic Research Group at Wageningen University in the Netherlands.He has 20+ years of experience conducting inter-disciplinary research and advisory work in Africa, Asia, and the Pacific, focusing on food security and poverty in low and middle-income countries. In 2022, he was listed in the top 0.1 percent of the world’s most cited scientists by Clarivate in the domain of cross-field research. Béné has worked on a wide range of topics, including natural resource management, policy analysis, science-policy interface, resilience measurement, and more recently food systems sustainability.
Chris holds a PhD in Environment and Life Sciences from the University of Paris, a post-graduate diploma in Development Economics from the School of Development Studies at the University of East Anglia, UK, and a Masters in Environmental Sciences from University of Marseille, France. Before joining CIAT in 2015, he worked for different research organizations, including the Institute of Development Studies in the UK, WorldFish, and the Economic Department of the University of Portsmouth, UK.
Professor Christina Hicks
Christina Hicks is an Environmental Social Scientist working on the relationships individuals and societies form with nature; how these relationships shape people’s social, environmental, and health outcomes; and how they create sustainable livelihood choices. Christina is a professor within the Political Ecology group at Lancaster University’s Environment Centre in the UK. She gained her PhD in 2013 from the ARC Centre of Excellence for Coral Reef Studies, James Cook University, after which, she held an Early Career Social Science Fellowship at the Center for Ocean Solutions, Stanford University. Hicks’ main source of research funding comes from an ERC Starting Grant: FAIRFISH.Hicks was awarded the 2019 Philip Leverhulme Prize for Geography. Her work is global with particular field sites on the east and west coasts of Africa and in the Pacific.
Ling Cao
Ling Cao is currently a full professor in the College of Ocean and Earth Sciences at Xiamen University. She earned her PhD in Aquatic Science from the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, and later advanced her research endeavors as a research scientist at Stanford University.With her roots in a family-owned fish farm in China and training as both an agronomist and environmental scientist, Ling has strategically positioned her research at the crossroads of marine conservation and sustainable fisheries and aquaculture management. In 2020, Ling was recognized for her outstanding contributions and was selected as a Pew Marine Fellow.
Beyond academia, Ling has actively contributed to policy dialog, offering insights and recommendations that have influenced sustainable fisheries and aquaculture policies, particularly in China. She has spearheaded projects that forecast the future trajectory and vulnerabilities of global blue food production. In all her endeavors, Ling underscores the necessity for forward-thinking and adaptability through scenario analysis and predictive modeling, empowering her to pinpoint and navigate both existing and emergent challenges and opportunities while devising strategies that harmonize blue food production with marine conservation.
Nikita Gopal
Nikita Gopal is Principal Scientist & Head (Acting), Extension, Information & Statistics Division, at the Indian Council of Agricultural Research-Central Institute of Fisheries Technology (ICAR-CIFT), Kochi, Kerala, India. Gopal is a founding member and currently the Chair of the Gender in Aquaculture and Fisheries Section of the Asian Fisheries Society (AFS). She is also Secretary of the Society of Fisheries Technologists of India (SOFTI) and Vice Chair of the Asian Fisheries Social Science Research Network.Gopal has carried out several national and international projects, including action-research projects. Her areas of work include seafood trade and markets; technology evaluation in fisheries; and socio-economic studies among fishing communities. Her current research interests include small-scale fisheries, labour migration and women’s work in fish value chains.
For the past decade, Gopal has been actively engaged in gender research in fisheries and aquaculture and has documented women’s contributions and challenges in seafood processing; small-scale aquaculture and fisheries; marketing and other post-harvest activities. She has been actively engaging with stakeholders at the grassroots and along with her team is involved in identification, co-creation and transfer of suitable technologies to reduce drudgery, especially for fisherwomen, and improve livelihoods. She supports the International Collective in Support of Fishworkers in their capacity building initiatives for coastal fisherwomen (and men) in the implementation of the FAO SSF Guidelines. She was one of the gender experts for the Illuminating Hidden Harvest study of the FAO, World Bank & Duke University.
Recognizing her sustained long-term contributions to gender in aquaculture and fisheries Gopal was awarded the AFS Gold Medal Award in 2022. She is also recipient of the AFS Merit Award in 2013 and part of a team of researchers of ICAR-CIFT which received the 4th National Award for Technology Innovation in Petrochemicals & Downstream Plastics Processing Industry of the Ministry of Chemicals and Fertilizers, Government of India. She is Fellow of the Society of SOFTI. She has published over 50 peer-reviewed articles in national and international journals.
Dr Meryl J Williams
Dr Meryl J Williams (FTSE Aust.) is the Past Chair of the Gender in Aquaculture and Fisheries Section of the Asian fisheries Society, an Honorary Life Member of the Society, and an Honorary Industry Fellow of the University of Technology Sydney. She has worked for over 45 years in fisheries, aquaculture, aquatic resource conservation and agricultural research and development. Currently, she is focusing on research and advocacy on women and gender in aquaculture and fisheries, information and science for fair and responsible fish production for food security and nutrition, and holds several professional editorial positions. She is a member of the Board of Aquaculture without Frontiers (Australia). She was formerly Director General of the WorldFish Center (1994-2004), during which time she concentrated the focus of WorldFish on eradicating poverty, improving people’s nutrition, and reducing pressure on the environment. She was previously the Director of the Australian Institute of Marine Science, Executive Director of the Bureau of Rural Sciences, tuna fisheries statistician at the Secretariat for the Pacific Community and fisheries biometrician in the Queensland state government service. In 2019, the Australian Centre for International Agricultural Research named a women’s leadership program after her.Dr. Meryl Williams is also the awardee of the 2024 IIFET Distinguished Service Award.
Professor Frank Asche
Professor Frank Asche is a professor at School of Forest, Fisheries and Geomatics Sciences and the Global Food Systems Institute, University of Florida. Frank Asche received his PhD from the Norwegian School of Economics and Business Administration and was at the University of Stavanger until 2016. He has been a Fulbright Scholar and a member of the science advisory board for WorldFish. He is Fellow of the World Aquaculture Society, editor for Aquaculture Economics and Management and serves as president of the North American Association of Fisheries Economists. He is also former president of the International Association of Aquaculture Economics and Management. Professor Asche's research interests focus on aquaculture and seafood markets, but has also been working on fisheries management, energy economics and food systems in general. Professor Asche has published numerous articles in international journals in economics as well as leading multi-disciplinary journals like Science and PNAS. He edited the book Primary Industries facing Global Markets and has co-authored The Economics of Aquaculture with Trond Bjørndal. He has also written several popular scientific articles, undertaken research projects in Norway, as well as for international organizations like FAO, OECD, the World Bank and WTO, and served on the drafting committee of the current law of the management of marine resources in Norway
Dale Squires
Dale Squires is Adjunct Professor of Economics University of California San Diego and member of International Seafood Sustainability Foundation's Scientific Advisory Committee. He is former US NOAA Fisheries Senior Scientist, Chair of Pacific Fishery Management Council’s Highly Migratory Species Plan Development and Management Teams and Groundfish and Coastal Pelagic Teams member, assistant professor at Universiti Putra Malaysia, fisheries officer at Department of Fisheries Sabah, Malaysia, and visitor (multiple times) at WorldFish Center. Recently an Oxford University Martin School Fellow, he has consulted with national governments, international organizations, and NGOs, and held visiting academic positions. He currently collaborates with the Inter-American Tropical Tuna Commission developing the Transferable Day Credit Scheme and the UN International Seabed Authority on developing fair and equitable royalty distribution and previously worked on the Authority’s Payment Regime. His current research interests are high-seas fisheries, deep-seabed mining, conservation, technological change, Pareto-efficient, fair, and equitable allocation, and quantifiable local distributive justice. He has co-edited and co-authored 11 books and over 150 peer-reviewed publications. He received his B.Sc. and M.Sc. from University California Berkeley and Ph.D. from Cornell University and studied at the American University of BeirutMore keynote speakers to be announced in the lead up to the conference.