Prof. Sayed Azam-Ali

Prof. Sayed Azam-Ali was elected as Chair of the Association of International Research and Development Centres for Agriculture (AIRCA) in 2017, a nine-member alliance focused on increasing global food security by supporting smallholder agriculture within healthy sustainable and climate-smart landscapes. He also holds the Chair in Global Food Security at the University of Nottingham.

After his first degree in Plant Biology at the University of Wales, Prof. Azam-Ali completed his PhD in Environmental Physics at the University of Nottingham in 1983. He then worked as a plant physiologist at the International Crops Research Institute for the Semi-Arid Tropics (ICRISAT), India, before returning to Nottingham where he became Professor of Tropical Agronomy in 2006. At Nottingham, Prof. Azam-Ali coordinated three major EU-funded Programmes on Bambara groundnut and was a principal partner in two other EU programmes. He coordinated the successful bid by the University of Nottingham to co-host CFF against stiff international competition. Prof. Azam-Ali was instrumental in the establishment of CFF as the world’s first centre dedicated to research on underutilised crops for food and non-food uses.