N Workshop

Professor Mark Sutton is an environmental physicist based at the UK Centre for Ecology & Hydrology (UKCEH), in Edinburgh. An expert on atmospheric ammonia, he leads international research activities on nitrogen at the science–policy interface.

He is a former chair of the International Nitrogen Initiative (INI) and currently directs the UNEP/GEF International Nitrogen Management System (INMS) and the UKRI Global Challenges Research Fund’s South Asian Nitrogen Hub.

Professor Sutton is also a co-chair of the UNECE Task Force on Reactive Nitrogen (TFRN) and vice chair of the Global Partnership on Nutrient Management (GPMN).

Dr Laura Cardenas (LC) is a Senior Research Scientist at Rothamsted Research with expertise in nitrogen (N) cycle in agricultural systems; investigating mechanisms leading to environmental losses to air and water and the controlling factors affecting N cycling in soils.

She is also an inventory compiler of the UK GHG inventory and an Inventory Expert Reviewer for the UNFCCC.

Dr Aimable Uwizeye is interested in global change towards sustainable agri-food systems focusing on the modelling of nitrogen flows and greenhouse gas emissions, and design of alternative futures of livestock systems.

He is a Livestock Policy Officer at the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO). He has experiences in livestock development, one health and environmental assessment.

He leads a programme aiming at improving the sustainability of livestock systems, while considering its vulnerability to climate change, reducing its environmental impacts and addressing food security.

He holds a doctorate in Veterinary Medicine, a double master's degree in Sustainable Development in Agriculture and a PhD in Global Animal Production systems from Wageningen University and Research (NL).

Jill S. Baron is a Senior Scientist with the U.S. Geological Survey, specializing in ecosystem ecology. Her interests include applying ecosystem concepts to management of human-dominated regions, and understanding the biogeochemical and ecological effects of climate change and atmospheric deposition on mountain ecosystems.

Since 2017 she has served on the project management board of the International Nitrogen Management System, a program that brings together the science community, the private sector and civil society to gather and synthesize evidence that can support international policy development to improve global nitrogen management.

Baron is founder and Co-Director of the John Wesley Powell Center for Earth System Science Analysis and Synthesis. She is also founder and Principal Investigator of the Loch Vale Watershed long-term monitoring and research program in Rocky Mountain National Park, which, since 1983, seeks to understand the ecological and biogeochemical implications of atmospheric deposition and climate change.

Baron was President of the Ecological Society of America in 2014 and is a Certified Senior Ecologist. She is a Fellow of the Ecological Society of America and the American Association for the Advancement of Sciences. Dr. Baron received her Ph.D. from Colorado State University in 1991 and has undergraduate and master’s degrees from Cornell University and the University of Wisconsin.

Nandula Raghuram is a Professor and former Dean of Biotechnology at Guru Gobind Singh Indraprastha University, New Delhi and the Chair of International Nitrogen Initiative

Prof. Raghuram’s main research goal is in crop improvement for nitrogen use effficiency (NUE). His research focus is on the functional biology and biotechnology of crop N use efficiency in rice, apart from its broader environmental aspects and policy. His group discovered the phenotype for NUE in rice and is shortlisting candidate genes for NUE improvement.

Raghuram co-founded the Indian Nitrogen Group and co-led the Indian Nitrogen Assessment and is currently involved in South Asian and International Nitrogen Assessments. He facilitated the first ever UN resolution on 'Sustainable Nitrogen Management' at UNEA4 and is currently a member of the Indian govt's inter-ministerial committee for its implementation. He has also been Editor in Chief of the international journal Physiology and Molecular Biology of Plants and Guest Editor for Frontiers in Plant Science, Environmental Research Letters and Environmental Research Communications.

Xin Zhang is an Associate Professor at the University of Maryland Center for Environmental Science.

She holds a Ph.D. in environmental science from Yale University and held a post-doctoral position at Princeton School of Public and International Affairs.

The goal of Xin’s research is to evaluate how socioeconomic and biogeochemical processes affect the global nutrient cycle and the sustainability of agricultural production and, in turn, provide policy input on mitigating nutrient pollution while meeting global food and biofuel demands.

Xin has published papers on various peer-reviewed journals (e.g., Nature), and have received grants from multiple institutions (e.g., National Science Foundation).

Gilles Billen got his PhD at the Free University of Brussels in 1976, where he later headed the Group of Aquatic Environmental Microbiology for 15 years.

He was mostly active in studying microbial processes in estuarine and marine areas, in connection with the cycles of carbon and nutrients. In 1997, he moved to Paris, and joined the CNRS, for taking, until 2007, the direction of the National Research Program on the Seine river (PIREN-Seine). He played a leading role in the development of biogeochemical modelling tools, aimed at testing scenarios for water resources management.

He also participated in various international forums, such as the SCOPE-UNESCO Global NEWS program and the NinE (Nitrogen in Europe) ESF Network, and participated to the editorial team of the European Nitrogen Assessment.

He is now conducting interdisciplinary research on agro-food systems, developing, among other things, future scenarios for feeding France, Europe and the World with agro-ecological agriculture using no synthetic fertilizers and pesticides.

Dr Estela Romero is an ecologist interested in the impact of human activities on organisms and processes in aquatic environments. She studied Environmental Sciences and specialized in Marine Ecology during her PhD. She has worked in research institutions in Spain, the UK and France, and on projects concerning terrestrial, marine and freshwater issues.

The global dimension of the biogeochemical cycles and their unique role in linking terrestrial and marine systems has become the main focus of her current research work. In particular, Dr Romero addresses the question of how global challenges related to water and food security will affect the biogeochemical fluxes of N and P along the aquatic continuum and the impacts this may have on freshwater and marine communities.