French translation: Catalysts of Change: Women Leaders in Science - Inbal Becker-Reshef

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 July 2, 2024.
Presenting Inbal Becker-Reshef.
Inbal Becker-Reshef is the founding director of NASA Harvest, NASA's global program on food security and agriculture. She is a research professor in the Department of Geographical Sciences at the University of Maryland and in the engineering, computing, and imaging lab at the University of Strasbourg. She leads multidisciplinary research and initiatives aimed at promoting agricultural monitoring, sustainability, and food security on a global scale, through joint development with partners from the public and private sectors. Becker-Reshef worked closely with national and international partners to initiate the GEOGLAM Program (GEO Global Agricultural Monitoring), where she leads the Crop Monitor initiative that provides monthly information on global crop conditions and risks. She is currently spearheading the development of the Rapid Agricultural Assessments for Policy Support (RAAPS), a tool designed to provide agricultural assessments based on satellite data amidst the challenges of increasing extreme weather events, conflicts, and decreasing market transparency.
Becker-Reshef has a background in soil science and remote sensing and obtained her Ph.D. in Geographical Sciences from the University of Maryland in 2012. Her contributions have been recognized with several awards, including the APEC Science Prize for Innovation, Research, and Education (ASPIRE) from the United States, NASA's Exceptional Public Service Medal, and the Arrell Food Prize.
Becker-Reshef will be in conversation with Mazvita Chiduwa, a cropping systems agronomist based at CIMMYT Ethiopia's office, who works with smallholder farmers in maize-based mixed farming systems under pressure to improve system resilience. Chiduwa's training and experience focus on the integration of legumes into farming systems, including an emphasis on rhizobium inoculant production, quality control, regulation, and application.
Chiduwa joined CIMMYT in 2022 and is working on diversifying maize-based farming systems in Malawi using conservation agriculture and different intercropping management between maize and legumes such as cowpea, peanut, pigeon pea, and soybean. She is also working on developing a digital agronomic decision-making tool for smallholder farmers, in collaboration with farmers from Malawi, Mozambique, and Zambia. The pilot work is being implemented in the context of soybeans in maize-based systems with the intention to develop it for other crops in the future. The main research questions are related to the choice of soybean varieties, planting dates, crop establishment methods, and site-specific nutrient recommendations.