Dr. Mario Herrero

Professor, Cornell University and Countdown Co-Chair

    Dr. Mario Herrero is a Professor of Sustainable Food Systems and Global Change in the Department of Global Development, a Scholar at the Cornell Atkinson Center for Sustainability, and a Nancy and Peter Meinig Family Investigator in the Life Sciences at Cornell University. His research focuses on increasing the sustainability of food systems for the benefit of humans and ecosystems. He works in the areas of sustainable intensification of agriculture, climate mitigation and adaptation, livestock systems, healthy and sustainable diets, sustainability metrics, and the true cost of food. He is a regular contributor to important global initiatives at the heart of the sustainability of global food systems, such as the UN Food Systems Summit (Scientific Group), the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (lead author), the Lancet Commission on Obesity, and the EAT-Lancet Commission on healthy diets from sustainable food systems. He has worked extensively in Africa, Latin America, and Asia. Before joining Cornell, he was Chief Scientist of Sustainability, for Australia’s National Science Agency, the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation (CSIRO). He also spent 12 years in Kenya at the International Livestock Research Institute, where he built and managed the Sustainable Livestock Futures Programme. Professor Herrero is considered a leader in the field of food systems and sustainability. He is in the top 10 of the 2021 Reuters list of the 1000 most influential climate scientists. He is the most cited livestock scientist and is in the top 3 of the most cited scientists working on food systems according to Google Scholar. He has been on the Web of Science Highly Cited Researchers list since 2019 in six different fields including agricultural science, ecology and evolution, plant and animal science, and clinical medicine. He has published more than 220 peer reviewed publications and has an H-Index of 96. He is currently an editor for Global Food Security (Elsevier) and is on the editorial boards of The Lancet Planetary Health, Tropical Grasslands, and Frontiers in Sustainable Food Systems. He also regularly contributes as a guest editor for the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences journal (PNAS). Mario was elected a Corresponding Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh, for his contributions to sustainable food systems and an Associate Fellow of Chatham House, the Royal Institute of International Affairs.