About the Speaker
Dr. Christian Witt is Senior Program Officer in the Agricultural Development team at the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. He provides strategic direction on innovation in soil health and agronomy as part of the Digital Farmer Services Portfolio aimed at increasing productivity and income of small scale producers in Sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia. Prior to joining the foundation in 2010, he was scientist and project manager in international agricultural research with 17+ years of experience in plant nutrition and soil nutrient management in the tropics.
Witt spent most of his career working in Asia. He was Director of the International Plant Nutrition Institute (IPNI) Southeast Asia based in Singapore and Malaysia from 2004 to 2009 after a long career at the International Rice Research Institute (IRRI) in the Philippines where he started his Ph.D. research in 1993. Witt holds a doctorate degree in Biology from Justus-von-Liebig University, Germany (1997).
