IHSS 2024 :: Speakers

Bruno Basso

Michigan State University, East Lansing, MI, USA

Bruno Basso is a Professor at the Michigan State University, USA. With a focus on sustainable row crop production, Basso is harnessing advanced UAV technology and predictive process-based models to quantify the impact of current and future climate, soil, genetics and management on crop yield and ecosystem services. Basso’s innovative and collaborative research has earned him several awards and key appointments, including being named a Fellow of the Soil Science Society of America and the American Society of Agronomy. He also received an MSU Innovation of the Year award in 2016, which lead to the commercialization of some aspects of his research and the foundation of a start-up company called CiBO Technologies which recently received the Forbes Impact Award. Basso currently leads a multimillion-dollar project funded by the USDA-NIFA on digital agriculture and implementation of climate-water-nutrient smart technologies, and is also working with the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations to develop a crop yield forecasting system for the country of Tanzania. He is the chair of the Climatology and Modeling Division of the American Society of Agronomy.

Roland Bol

Institute of Bio- and Geosciences (IBG), Jülich, Germany

Roland Bol is a Research team leader on natural and exogenous organic matter dynamics and elemental cycles at the Institute of Bio- and Geosciences, Agrosphere, Forschungszentrum Jülich, Germany. He is also a Professor of Biogeochemistry at the School of natural Sciences, Bangor University (UK) and holds the special visiting chair in terrestrial Biogeochemistry at the University of Amsterdam (Netherlands). His research focuses on the complex biogeochemical processes that occur at the soil-water-air interface in natural and agricultural ecosystems. His current funded projects deal mainly with the role of colloids in heavy metals and phosphorus transfers from soil to water, micro and nano-plastics, rose waste composting, and nitrogen deposition around farms.

Yiannis Deligiannakis

Department of Physics, University of Ioannina, Ioannina, Greece

Yiannis Deligiannakis is a Professor at the Department of Physics of the University of Ioannina, Greece, and head of the Laboratory of Physical Chemistry of Materials and the Environment. He is an elected Visiting Professor at the Department of Mechanical Engineering at ETH Zurich, Switzerland. He has worked at the "Democritos" Research Center, and at the Section de Bioenergetique Nuclear Research Center (CEA) of Saclay, Paris, France. He has served as President-elect of the International Humic Substances Society (2018-2020). His scientific work focuses on the development of new nanocatalysts at Industrial Scale, using Flame-Spray-Pyrolysis (FSP) technology and their applications in Green Environmental Technologies with an emphasis on "Artificial Photosynthesis" production of H₂ from H₂O and the conversion of CO₂ into next generation liquid fuels. In addition, his research includes studying the environmental behavior of new nanomaterials, understanding their environmental impacts and their life cycle.

Fabio Fava

Dept Civil, Chemical, Environmental, and Materials Engineering, University of Bologna, Bologna, Italy

Fabio Fava is a Professor at the University of Bologna. He is the Italian Representative in various panels of the European Commission, including the European Bioeconomy Policy Forum, the States Representatives Group of the Public Private Partnership "Circular BioBased Europe" (CBE JU), the EuroMed Group of Senior Officials of the "BLUEMED initiative" and the Horizon EU Cluster VI programming Committee. He is also the Italian Representative of the Italian Presidency of Council of Ministers in the frame of the 2024 G20 Bioeconomy initiative and Italian Representative in the Working Party on Biotechnology, Nanotechnology and Converging Technologies of the OECD (Paris). Finally, he is Senior Official of the Minister of University and Research in the frame of the 2024 G7 Science & Technology; Senior Expert in the programming Committee of Horizon EU Mission "A soil deal for Europe"; Member of the Scientific Committee of the European Environmental Agency (EEA) for the "Circular Economy and resource use" domain. He also coordinated 2 European FP7 collaborative projects and other national projects.

Heike Knicker

Instituto de la Grasa -CSIC, Seville, Spain

Heike Knicker is a Research Professor at the “Instituto de la Grasa” (IG-CSIC) in Seville, Spain, where she is the head of the research group “Interactions between Soils, Plants and Microorganisms” of the Department of Food Biotechnology. Most of her research is dedicated to the study of the structure of biochar and the impact of its use as soil amendment on soil biochemical processes and plant development, as well as to the impact of changing environments and climate change on the quality and quantity of soil organic matter (SOM). She is also highly interested in advancing analytical tools - in particular solid-state NMR spectroscopy - for an improved understanding of processes involved in SOM formation. In 2016, she was awarded the Philippe Duchaufour Medal of the European Geosciences Union. In May 2024, she has been elected Vice President of the IHSS.

Diane M. McKnight

Institute of Arctic and Alpine Research, University of Colorado Boulder, CO, USA

Diane M. McKnight is a Distinguish professor at the Institute of Arctic and Alpine Research of the University of Colorado Boulder. Her research focuses mainly on interactions between hydrologic, chemical and biological processes in controlling the dynamics in diverse freshwater environments, including lakes and streams in the Colorado Rocky Mountains and in the McMurdo Dry Valleys in Antarctica, and is carried out through field-scale experiments, modelling, and laboratory characterization of natural substrates. She received several awards including the Robert E. Horton Medal (American Geophysical Union, 2021), the John Dalton Medal (European Geosciences Union, 2015), the Hydrology Section Award (American Geophysical Union, 2014), the Fellowship of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (2009) and the Meritorious Service Award (U.S. Geological Survey, 1995).

Jianming Xu

Institute of Soil and Water Resources & Environmental Science, Zhejiang University, China

Jianming Xu is a Professor in the Institute of Soil and Water Resources & Environmental Science at Zhejiang University, China. He is a leading soil scientist with particular interests in the field of soil pollution and remediation, and soil quality and food safety. He is a fellow of the Soil Science Society of America, the American Society of Agronomy and the Soil Science Society of China. He is currently a Vice-Chair of the Division 2 “Soil Properties and Processes” of the International Union of Soil Sciences (IUSS), and the Coordinator of Chinese Chapter of International Humic Substances Society. He is an associate editor of Research, Biogeosciences and Pedosphere. Dr. Xu received numerous invitations to present his research at national and international conferences, and has published more than 400 peer-reviewed papers in journals such as Nature, Science, Nature Ecology & Evolution, Nature Communications, PNAS, and Environmental Science & Technology.

Invited Speakers