About

Bill Davies is Emeritus Distinguished Professor of Plant Biology at Lancaster University, UK and has published widely in the international literature. Until his early 20s he worked on the family farm in the south of England and this experience fuelled his interest in food and farming. His research group develops interventions that are aimed at enhancing global food security, while particularly focussing on understanding how crop plants might sustain yield under increasingly challenging environmental conditions. The Davies lab has won a ‘Queen’s Award for Innovation’ for work on sustainable resource use in agriculture. Recent work with CIMMYT has resulted in the development of new pre-breeding crop screening methods. Bill has an interest in helping farmers profit from novel science and until recently directed a professional postgraduate programme for those who work in the global food supply chain. Davies was Editor in Chief of the Journal of Experimental Botany for 10 years and is currently an Associate Editor of ‘Food and Energy Security’ and ‘Frontiers of Agricultural Science and Engineering’. In 2011, he was awarded a CBE for services to science.