J. Vern Long

Lecture: "Opportunities in International Development"

About the speaker

Dr. J. Vern Long is a Senior International Agriculture Research Advisor with the U.S. Agency for International Development, Bureau for Food Security. She provides technical leadership on research priority setting for the USAID agricultural research portfolio and covers intellectual property, genetic resources movement and use issues, and linkages between agriculture-nutrition research across the USAID agricultural research portfolio.

She manages USAID's sorghum, millet and legumes research programs at member centers of the Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research and U.S. Universities, including the Peanut & Mycotoxin Innovation Lab at the University of Georgia. She represents USAID to the CGIAR's Independent Science and Partnership Council and is former Chair of the Agricultural Research Working Group of the Global Donor Platform on Rural Development.

Prior to joining USAID, she was a Visiting Assistant Research Professor at the University of Illinois ­ Chicago in the Departments of Biological Sciences & Public Administration where she conducted genetic resources policy research. She was a Fulbright Senior Scholar in Senegal, a USDA/National Research Initiative Postdoctoral Scholar in child nutrition at the University of California ­ Los Angeles, and was an American Association for the Advancement of Science, Science and Technology Policy Fellow at the USDA/Foreign Agricultural Service.

She holds a Ph.D. from Cornell University in plant breeding and genetics with minors in human nutrition and seed physiology and an undergraduate degree in the biological sciences from Smith College.

Learn more:

2013 International Agricultural Day - CAES Reception