Angela Karp

Angela is Director for Science Innovation, Engagement and Partnerships at Rothamsted Research. She is leading the institute’s overall strategy on external engagement and partnerships, and is developing new mechanisms for collaborative innovation, including a new accelerator initiative (AgRIA) to co-develop innovative solutions with businesses to challenges in agri-food. Angela has more than 35 years’ experience in crop genetics and breeding for food and bio-renewables. Her recent research career focused on optimising the sustainable yield and composition of perennial biomass crops (especially willows) for bioenergy, biofuels and other industrial products, under low-input arable systems. She has more than 130 refereed publications, co-authored a text book on genetics, and is co-editor of books on genetics and bioenergy. In 2007, she received the Royal Agricultural Society of England Research Medal and, in 2008, the Alfred-Toepfer Prize for her research achievements.

Open Minds, Open Doors

True innovation, or that “call to revolution”, requires disruptive thinking. And you cannot do that without an open mind. To meet the challenges of producing food sustainably, we will need innovations and we will need to think disruptively about current ways of producing food. To go back to Charles’ words – the clues are in the inherent genius of nature. We would do well to open our minds to those who try to find sustainable answers through these routes. Together we might open doors to new discoveries.

August 18, 2017