Opening Keynote Speaker
Dr. Van Schepler-Luu • International Rice Research Institute (IRRI)
Dr. Van Schepler-Luu is the head of the Plant Pathology and Host Plant Resistance Group at the International Rice Research Institute (IRRI) in the Philippines. She leads collaborative research efforts with partners from over 20 countries, focusing on rice diseases that pose significant threats to global food security. Her PathoTracer project involves 23 institutions across 20 countries and focuses on the development and application of high-throughput markers for monitoring bacterial blight and blast. She coordinates the International Rice False Smut Consortium (IRFSC), which brings together 25 institutions from 12 countries to address false smut, an increasingly important disease in rice production systems.
Schepler-Luu’s group conducts research on pathogen population dynamics, the identification of disease-resistance genes, and beneficial microbes that enhance rice immunity to biotic stresses. These efforts contribute to improving integrated disease management strategies in rice production
Before joining IRRI, Van led the rice research team at the University of Düsseldorf, Germany, where she focused on genome editing and rice-bacterial blight pathogen interactions. She obtained her Ph.D. from the Max Planck Institute for Chemical Ecology in Germany, where her research concentrated on plant defense mechanisms against fungal pathogens and insect herbivores.
Closing Plenary Speaker
Jan Kreuze • International Potato Center (CIP)
Jan Kreuze received his MSc in plant breeding at Wageningen Agricultural University in 1997, after which he spent half a year as a researcher at the Institute of Biotechnology at Helsinki University, working on the characterization of potato-infecting Streptomyces species and viruses of sweetpotato. He subsequently did his PhD degree in virology at the Institute of Plant Biology of the Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences (SLU), characterizing synergistic interactions between viruses of sweetpotato, which he finalized in 2002.
In 2003 he moved to the International Potato Center (CIP) in Lima, Peru, for a postdoc on generating transgenic resistance to sweet potato virus diseases and has been there ever since in various roles performing research on host-pathogen interactions, transgenic plants (both artificial and natural) and in more recent years viral diagnostics and metagenomics. Currently, he is heading the department for Regenerative Agriculture at CIP, the plant health and mycotoxin management area of work in the CGIAR Sustainable Farming Science Program, is an adjunct professor at the University of Helsinki, is an editor at the
Journal Plant Pathology and member of the International Committee on the Taxonomy of Viruses. He has published over 100 papers in international peer-reviewed journals and numerous book chapters.
