French translation: Catalysts of Change: Women Leaders in Science - Hale Tufan

CIMMYT has launched a ‘TED Talk meets fireside chat’-style series on women leaders. As Marion Wright Edelman said, “You can’t be what you can’t see.” If we want more women leaders in science institutions like ours, we need to provide more opportunities to hear from women leaders about their life journeys, lessons, and insights. We seek to highlight women who are leaders in all sorts of capacities, fields and disciplines, because we believe that leadership styles can take many different forms.
This is our latest episode from the series Catalysts of Change, from Tuesday April 23, 2024.
Presenting Hale Tufan
Hale Ann Tufan leads the Equitable Agricultural Research (EQUAL) Lab at Cornell which brings together researchers with experience in plant breeding, agricultural economics, geographic information systems (GIS), anthropology, gender studies and science and technology studies to contribute to equitable crop improvement theory and practice.
Hale explores how agricultural research processes and outputs can positively contribute to gender equality and social inclusion. Through her research to develop methods and approaches she enables gender analysis in agricultural innovation, while advocating for inclusive agricultural research by challenging power and norms in the research ecosystem. Hale serves in leadership positions of several grant-funded projects, including priority setting co-lead of the Feed the Future Innovation Lab for Crop Improvement, principal investigator of the Gender-Responsive Researchers Equipped for Agricultural Transformation (GREAT) project, and principal investigator of Muhogo Bora: Better Cassava for All. Hale brings a multidisciplinary background to her research spanning Ph.D. level research in molecular plant pathogen interactions, plant breeding with CIMMYT, international agricultural research for development program management, and gender research and capacity development across sub-Saharan Africa. She is the 2019 recipient of the Norman Borlaug Field Award.
Hale Ann Tufan will have a conversation with Naeela Qureshi who is working as a Wheat Rust Pathologist and Molecular Geneticist at CIMMYT. She is responsible for carrying out rust research activities in Mexico, providing support to the breeding and physiology teams in the global wheat program. Part of her role also focuses on dissecting and characterizing genetic components of rust resistance through QTL mapping using advanced bi-parental RIL populations alongside developing molecular markers linked with rust resistance genes/QTL for their use in marker-assisted breeding. Naeela also supports phenotyping activities in Kenya focused on stem rust and yellow rust resistance. Her research work on wheat rust resistance was acknowledged by the International Wheat Genome Sequencing Consortium (IWGSC) and she received an Early Career Award in 2015. She was also a recipient of Women in Triticum (WIT) award by the Borlaug Global Rust Initiative (BGRI) in 2014.