Vice-President in charge of international affairs
Institut national de recherche pour l'agriculture, l'alimentation et l'environnement
(Paris, France)
Dr. Jean-Francois Soussana is Vice-President for international affairs at INRAE, Paris, France.
He obtained his PhD in plant physiology at USTL Montpellier in 1986 after an engineer degree in agronomy. After becoming a senior scientist he led a research lab on grassland ecosystems and global change and was Scientific Director for Environment at INRA (2010-2017).
Since 1998, Dr. Soussana is member of the Working Group II of IPCC and was Lead Author for the 3rd, 4th and 5th Assessment Reports and shared with all IPCC authors the Nobel Prize for Peace in 2007. He contributes to scientific expertise for FAO (e.g. State of Food and Agriculture, 2016). He has coordinated national and European (EC FP5 and FP7) research projects on climate change and agriculture. He co-chairs the Integrative Research Group of the Global Research Alliance on agricultural greenhouse gases (46 countries) and the Steering Council of AgMIP, an international modeling program on climate change impacts on agriculture.
Dr. Soussana has led the sectorial committee on ecosystems and sustainable development of the French research agency (ANR) and the scientific advisory board of the joint programing of research by 21 European countries on agriculture, food security and climate change (FACCE JPI). He coordinates the research strategy of INRA on agroecology. He is also a member of the Scientific and Technical Committee of the Lima-Paris initiative “4 per 1000. Soils for Food Security and Climate” which has been signed during the climate negotiations of COP21.
Dr. Soussana has published close to 150 refereed research papers in international journals, cited 7,000 times, as well as two books and a dozen of book chapters. He has developed novel experimental and mathematical modelling approaches to the impacts of global change on agriculture, soils, biodiversity, carbon and nitrogen cycles and greenhouse gas emissions.
