Invited Speakers

Dr Sunday Ekesi is the Director of Research and Partnerships at icipe. He has been with icipe for 14 years and has held various positions at icipe including; Head, Plant Health Theme, Leader, African Fruit Fly Program (AFFP) and Leader, Insect for Food, Feed and other uses Program (INSEFF) and Interim Director of Reseach and Partnerships. He previously worked as a Postdoctoral Fellow at Rothamsted Research, UK and as a Lecturer in Crop Protection with Ahmadu Bello University, Nigeria.

Dr Ekesi holds a Doctor of Philosophy (PhD) in Crop Protection from Ahmadu Bello University in Nigeria through icipe’s African Regional Postgraduate Programme in Insect Science (ARPPIS) and a Master of Science (MSc) in Applied Entomology and Parasitology from the University of Jos in Nigeria. Dr Ekesi has served in various international advisory and consultancy panels, for the Food and Agricultural Organization of the United Nations (FAO), the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), and the World Bank. He has more than 100 scientific publications in peer-reviewed journals and been a member of editorial board of various journals. He was recognised by icipe as the Outstanding Principal Staff of the Year in 2016. He is a Fellow of the African Academy of Sciences (FAAS).

Dr. Jeffery K. Tomberlin is a Professor & AgriLife Research Fellow in the Department of Entomology at Texas A&M University. He is also the Director of the Forensic & Investigative Sciences Program at Texas A&M University, and the principle investigator of the Forensic Laboratory for Investigative Entomological Sciences (F.L.I.E.S.) Facility (forensicentomology.tamu.edu) at Texas A&M University. Research in the F.L.I.E.S. Facility examines species interactions on ephemeral resources such as vertebrate carrion, decomposing plant material and animal wastes in order to better understand the mechanisms regulating arthropod behavior as related to arrival, colonization and succession patterns. The goals of his program are numerous; however, a major focus of his research is on waste management in confined animal facilities as well as concerns with food waste being placed in landfills. Because of Dr. Tomberlin’s commitment to protecting the environment while helping others, he, along with a group of close friends, started EVO Conversion Systems, LLC (www.evoconsys.com). The mission of EVO is to protect the environment while producing protein with the black soldier fly. Through EVO, individuals are trained to mass produce the black soldier fly as well as partner with other companies that are a part of the EVO Consortium (https://www.evoconsys.com/consortium.html). EVO has partnerships throughout the world and welcomes others interested in learning how to become a collaborator on this exciting path towards sustainable agriculture.

Prof. Leen Van Campenhout obtained her PhD in 2000 at KU Leuven, Belgium. She then worked a number of years as R&D Manager Enzymology and Microbiology at Kemin Europa, with focus on antimicrobials, acidifiers and enzymes as feed additives mainly for pigs and poultry. Currently she is full professor at KU Leuven, teaching courses such as ‘Fermentation Technology’, ‘Biotechnology’, ‘Feed and Petfood Technology’, ‘Food Microbiology’ and ‘Conservation Technology’, and co-teaching in ‘Insects for Food and Feed’. She coordinates the research group Lab4Food at KU Leuven Campus Geel (https://iiw.kuleuven.be/onderzoek/Lab4Food). The microbiological and chemical aspects during the rearing and processing of insects on an industrial scale have been the group's main research line for several years. More specifically, chemical and microbiological safety, management of the microbiota and new valorisation opportunities represent the key points in the research. Research projects consist of precompetitive, collaborative projects with industry or bilateral projects with companies, and are based on internal funding from KU Leuven, national funds and European funds. Not only the insects typically reared in Europe are studied, but also some African and Asian species.

Prof.Dr.Ir. Arnold van Huis completed his undergraduate studies at the State Horticultural College in Utrecht and his graduate studies at Wageningen University in the Netherlands. He worked from 1974 to 1979 in Nicaragua for the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) of the United Nations in a research project on integrated pest management (IPM) in food grains. Based on these studies he got his PhD from Wageningen University. From 1982 to 1985 he coordinated in Niger a regional crop protection training project for eight Sahelian countries. From 1985 to 2015 he worked as tropical entomologist at Wageningen University, the Netherlands, and has been responsible for a number of IPM and biological control projects in tropical countries. From 2000 to 2014 he coordinated a project dealing with interdisciplinary agricultural research in three West African countries. He supervised 24 PhD theses, published more than 300 papers of which about half refereed, co-authored three books and edited more than 10 conference proceedings. Since 2015 he is emeritus professor and concentrates on insects as food and feed. In 2013 he published with FAO the book ‘Edible insects: future prospects for food and feed security’ which has been downloaded seven million times. He is also the first author of the ’The insect cookbook’ published in 2014 by Columbia University Press. In 2017 he (co)edited the book “Insects as food and feed: from production to consumption”. In 2014 he organised with FAO the conference ’Insects to feed the world’, attended by 450 participants from 45 countries. From 2010 to 2014 he was responsible for a Netherlands’ funded project entitled ’Sustainable production of insect protein’. He is in the scientific advisory board of several projects on edible insects. He is chief editor of the Journal of Insects as Food and Feed. On edible insects, he (co)authored several books, ten book chapters, and about 30 refereed and 20 non-refereed publications. Each year he gives numerous presentations in and outside the Netherlands on insects as food and feed.

Prof. Dr. Andreas Vilcinskas is the director of the Institute for Insect Biotechnology , which he has founded at the Justus-Liebig Institute of Giessen in 2015 (https://www.uni-giessen.de/fbz/fb09/institute/iib) and the head of the Bioresources branch of the Fraunhofer Institute for Molecular Biology and Applied Ecology (IME) in Giessen Germany. He is the coordinator and the spokesman of the LOEWE-Center for Insect Biotechnology and Bioresources, funded by the Hessen State Ministry of Higher Education, Research and the Arts (HMWK) via the excellence program LOEWE (€ 42 Million, 2014-2022): (http://www.insekten-biotechnologie.de/en/). He studied Biology and graduated 1994 at the Free University of Berlin, where he was also working as postdoc and junior group leader at the Institute for Zoology (1994-1998) and where he obtained his habilitation in Zoology (1998). After an interim professorship at the University of Potsdam (1999-2004) he was appointed as a full professor at the Justus-Liebig University in Giessen. He is a recognized pioneer in insect biotechnology and has published more than 240 papers in peer-reviewed journals.