2021 New Genomic Techniques – sustainable tool to face climate change?

Álvaro Amaro has been a MEP since 2019. He graduated in Economics at the Faculty of Economics of the University of Coimbra (FEUC). In 1979, he joined the Central Region Planning Commission (Coimbra). He was also a member of the Administrative Council of Social Services of the University of Coimbra, Secretary-General of the National Association of Portuguese Municipalities (1985), and an instructor at the Centre for Studies and Municipal Training (Coimbra). In 1985, he was appointed Head of Office of the Deputy Minister and for Parliamentary Affairs (X Portuguese Constitutional Government). He was Secretary of State for Agriculture (XI and XII Portuguese Constitutional Government) from 1987 to 1995. In 1987 and 1991 he was elected Member of the Portuguese Parliament at the Coimbra District Electoral Circle, positions that he did not take up because he was a Member of government. In 1988, he was elected Deputy-Chairman of the PSD Coimbra District Political Committee (DPC), and in 1994 was elected President of the PSD DPC of Guarda, a position for which he was re-elected in 1996. In 1995 and 1999 (until December 2001) he was a Member of the Portuguese Parliament elected by the Guarda District Electoral Circle. In March 1996, he became Director and Professor of the Degree in ‘Regional and Municipal Administration’ at the Independent University (Lisbon), until 2003. In December 2001, he was elected Mayor of the Municipality of Gouveia until 2013, and in September 2013 until June this year, he was Mayor of the Municipality of Guarda and Chairman of the Social Democratic Local Representatives (ASD). Between July 2003 and April 2006 he was non-executive Administrator of PT Comunicações, SA and was a full member of the Committee of the Regions (CoR) from 2013 until he was elected as a Member of the European Parliament. An enthusiast of non-governmental and student movements, he was founder and Chairman of the Alumni Association of the FEUC, Chairman of the Supervisory Board (1995-1997) and of the General Assembly (1997) of the Academic Association of Coimbra/Autonomous Football Organisation. From April 1995 to January 2000, he was Chairman of the Academic House in Lisbon. Between 2014 and 2018 he was Chairman of the General Assembly of AIRC (Centre Region Informatics Association). He is a Grand Officer of the Order of Infante D Henrique (Portugal) (since 2014), holds the Merit and Citizenship Medal (2019), attributed by the Portuguese Firefighters League, the Gouveia Municipality Medal of Honour (1993) and the AIRC Gold Medal (2007). He has published several books and articles.. More information Twitter – @alvaroamaroEU Facebook – alvaroamaroEU

Graduated in Chemical Engineering from Engineering Faculty / Porto University and is currently a PhD student in Agribusiness and Sustainability at Trás-os-Montes e Alto Douro University. He has been working at the forestry and forest-based industries sector since 2006. In 2009 he joined the WWF Mediterranean team, mostly focusing on Portugal. He is currently the Forest, Food and Wildlife Coordinator at Associação Natureza Portugal, in association with WWF, and member of Forest Stewardship Council Portugal board of directors. In addition to his experience in forestry related issues and landscape approaches, he participated in several projects and coordinated several studies in the area. More recently, he has been responsible for several public landscape participation processes, involving communities and different actors in the sector. More information Website – www.natureza-portugal.org LinkedIn – ruibarreira

Paula Cruz de Carvalho is an Agronomic  Engineering  graduate from the Instituto Superior de Agronomia, Universidade de Lisboa. She is responsible for the area of plant health, seeds and vegetative propagation material, genetic resources, plant varieties and plant protection products. National member of the OECD Schemes for the Varietal Certification,  International Union for the Protection of New Varieties of Plants (UPOV), International Seed Testing Association (ISTA), International Plant Protection Convention (IPPC) and European and Mediterranean Plant Protection Organisation (EPPO). Member of the Administrative Council of the Community Plant Variety Office (CPVO) and, since 2012, the Portuguese Chief Officer of Plant Health. More information Website – www.dgav.ptt

Eduardo Cuoco was born in Naples (Italy) where he studied and successfully completed his MSc in Food Science and Technologies. Successively, he gained a PhD at the Polytechnic University of Marche (IT) and an executive master on Block-chain Technologies: Business Innovation and Application at MIT Sloan (US). He has been involved in organic farming since 1998. During the first career phase (1998/2008), he focused on the regional and national development of the organic policies in Italy, regarding rural development plans, promotional and certification schemes. Furthermore, he also promoted the organic industry in Italy as an innovation broker. Since 2008 he is contributing and serving the European organic sector as staff member of IFOAM Organics Europe where in 2016 he was appointed as Director. Further, Eduardo is involved in the establishment and management of the European Technology Platform "TP Organics" (as Head of the Secretariat) and he is participating in different expert groups such as the Agriculture Knowledge and Innovation Systems (AKIS-SCAR) and the Euro-Mediterranean Expert Group (EMEG). More information Website – www.organicseurope.bio Twitter – @EduardoCuoco LinkedIn – organicseurope

Paula Duque obtained a BSc in plant biology and a PhD in physiology and biochemistry both at the University of Lisbon, having conducted part of her doctoral work at the HortResearch Institute in Auckland, New Zealand. Her postdoctoral studies were conducted at The Rockefeller University in New York, first in Nam-Hai Chua’s lab on stress signaling in the plant model Arabidopsis thaliana and then with Magda Konarska on the mechanisms of mRNA splicing human cells. She returned to Portugal in 2007 to take up her present position as Group Leader at the Instituto Gulbenkian de Ciência (IGC). Her research team uses Arabidopsis thaliana as a model system and combines reverse genetics, physiology and biochemistry to investigate how plants perceive and respond to environmental cues at the molecular level. Two major lines of work in her lab focus on the biological relevance of alternative splicing and membrane transport in plant stress tolerance. More information Website – https://gulbenkian.pt/ciencia/research-groups/pduque

Garlich von Essen was born in Germany in 1964 and studied agriculture and economics at the University of Göttingen where he graduated in 1990. He started his professional career in the European Commission’s Directorate-General for Agriculture before taking a scholarship at the College of Europe in Bruges, graduating in administrative and political sciences. From 1994 to 1999 he worked in the European Parliament where, next to agricultural and structural policy, he worked specifically on the EU’s R&D policy and funding instruments. Joining the European seed industry in 1999 as Director Public Affairs, he became Secretary-General of Euroseeds (then ESA European Seed Association) in 2004. More information Website – www.euroseeds.eu Twitter – @GarlichEssen Facebook – garlich.vonessen LinkedIn – garlich-v-essen-06a76644

CEO Habilitation in Molecular and Celullar Biology (2003), Chemical and Biological Technology Institute of the NOVA University of Lisbon (ITQB NOVA). PhD in Cellular Biology (1992) from the Faculty of Sciences of the University of Lisbon (FCUL) Areas of expertise: Plant Molecular Biology; Plant Biotechnology; Plant Molecular Biodiversity; Plant Genomics; Enzyme Technology Other current positions: Director (PI), Plant Cell Biotechnology Laboratory, ITQB NOVA; Assistant Professor, Master in Biotechnology for Sustainability (ITQB NOVA) and PhD Program “Plants for Life” (ITQB NOVA) Previous positions: Deputy director of GREEN-it Research Unit; Assistant Professor, Department of Plant Biology, Faculty of Sciences of the University of Lisbon; President of the Center for Biotechnology Information (CiB); First President of the Portuguese Order of Biologists (Ordem dos Biólogos); Member of the National Council of Ethics for the Life Sciences More information Website – www.iplantprotect.pt

José Pereira Palha has been Agricultural Manager of two family agricultural holdings, which specialize in cereals, oilseeds, and cattle, since 2000. He has been a Member of the Board of the CAP – Portuguese Farmers Confederation, since 2014 and is President of the Direction of ANPOC - National Association of Producers of Cereals, Oilseeds and Protein crops (since 2014). He is also a representative of the Cereals sector in several National and European institutions and is a regular speaker at seminars and events related to the cereals sector, farming, innovation and environment. He is author of several articles and publications on the sector of the Cereals, Farming, innovation, and environment José is an expert appointed by the CAP in the Working Group of COPA-COGECA and the Civil Agri- cultural Dialogue Group of DG Agri of the European Commission in Brussels since 2014. More information Facebook – jose.palha.39 LinkedIn – jose-palha-595a0129

After graduating from the Lisbon Agronomy Institute, António Sevinate Pinto worked as the Marketing Director of Rhône-Poulenc Portugal for almost 20 years. After working as the General Director of Rhône-Poulenc Portugal and Member of the Strategy Committee of Rhône-Poulenc Europe, he founded LUSOSEM – a Portuguese Seed a Plant Protection Product company. In addition to this, António Sevinate Pinto was the founder and the first President of the Portuguese Crop Protection Association (ANIPLA). At the present, he accommodates his work in LUSOSEM with the role of a non-executive Director of AGROBEJA (Products for Agriculture and Animal Production), member of the board of GROQUIFAR (The Portuguese Chemical and Phytopharmaceutical wholesalers Association) and head of the board of ANSEME.

Alexandre Tiedtke Quintanilha is a Portuguese scientist, former director of the Instituto de Biologia Molecular e Celular of the University of Porto and Professor at ICBAS - Abel Salazar Institute of Biomedical Sciences. More information Website – www.parlamento.pt

Our event moderator, Cristina Nobre Soares is a science communicator consultant. She is a Forest Engineer graduated from Instituto Superior de Agronomia at the Universidade de Lisboa. In 2015, after a carrer in Forestry , GIS and as a teacher in Instituto Politécnico de Tomar, started her path in science communication and in plain language communication, with her work at Português Claro (2015-2016). Since then she has collaborated with several companies and academic institutions as: Instituto Superior de Agronomia, Universidade de Coimbra (MARE- Centro de Ciências do Mare e do Ambiente), Instituto de Telecomunicações (IST), Mare (Cetemares IPL), Instituto Nacional de Saúde – Dr. Ricardo Jorge, Universidade da Madeira (IsoPlexis), Montis, Associação Portuguesa de Impacte Ambiental, FENAREG, among many others. Her work is focused on language and storytelling. Since 2019 she has trained about 200 scientists and agronomists in science writing and communication. More information Website – www.cristinanobresoares.com

Andreas Weber was appointed Director, Center for Synthetic Life Sciences (CSL), HHU Düsseldorf in 2013 and previously was Professor (W3) and Chair, Institute of Plant Biochemistry, Department of Biology, Heinrich-Heine-University, Düsseldorf, Germany (2007 onwards); Adjunct Professor of Plant Biology, Department of Plant Biology, Michigan State University (2007-2012); Associate Professor of Plant Biology, Department of Plant Biology Michigan State University (2002-2007);  Research Group Leader, Department of Plant Biology University of Cologne, Germany (1997-2002); Visiting Scientist (Honorary Fellow), Department of Botany University of Wisconsin-Madison (2000-2001) and Postdoctoral Fellow, Department of Plant Biology University of Cologne, Germany (1996-1997). EU-SAGE is a network representing plants scientists at 134 European plant science institutes and societies that have joined forces to provide information about genome editing and promote the development of European and EU member state policies that enable the use of genome editing for sustainable agriculture and food production. More information Website – www.plant-biochemistry.hhu.de