Full Name
Howard-Yana Shapiro
Job Title
Distinguished Senior Fellow
Company
Resilient Landscapes
Speaker Bio
Howard has been involved with sustainable agricultural and agroforestry systems, plant breeding, molecular biology and genetics for over 50 years. He has worked with indigenous communities, NGO’s, governmental agencies and the private sector around the world. During his long and diverse career in agriculture he has been involved with organizations as diverse as the National Sharecroppers Fund working as a Field Organizer in Tennessee, Mississippi and Arkansas; the AME/CME African-American colleges, junior colleges and agricultural high schools in the Deep South teaching fundamental agriculture and working on the accreditation of the institutions; seed saving projects amongst the elderly African-American rural populations including the oral history of the seeds; and documenting agriculture in a series of Oaxacan, Mixtecan, Mixe villages for Instituto Nacional de Anthropologia e Historia in Mexico City.
His academic career spans 45 years, Shapiro is a Senior Fellow at UC Davis, College of Agriculture and Environmental Sciences. A former Fulbright Scholar and Ford Foundation Fellow, was a winner of the National Endowment for the Humanities Award and in 2007 Howard was made a Distinguished Fellow at the World Agroforestry Centre. He was Chairperson of the Board of the Agriculture Sustainability Institute at UC Davis for 10 years and in 2009 he was named recipient of The Award of Distinction from The College of Agriculture and Environmental Sciences, UC Davis. He served as the Co-Chairperson for the 1st and 2nd World Congress of Agroforestry.
Shapiro founded the African Orphan Crops Consortium (AOCC) and the African Plant Breeding Academy (AfPBA) in 2012. The effort will sequence, assemble and annotate 101 key food cultivars, which are the backbone of African nutrition. The AfPBA will train 150 mid-career African scientists in modern breeding technology for discovery and translation of new nutritionally improved varieties.
In October of 2018 he launched with Justin Seigel, the Foldit Aflatoxin Puzzle, with 460,000 online gamers to redesign and improve enzymes to degrade aflatoxin. Over 1,600,000 puzzle solution have been submitted for testing. Currently, 15 newly designed enzymes are in laboratory testing to detoxify aflatoxin in storage.
In 2021 he initiated the African Plant Breeding Academy. CRISPR with Jennifer Doudna, at the Innovative Genomics Institute, aiming to empower 100 African molecular scientists to deploy the latest CRISPR technologies (i.e. genome editing) to fast-track development of new sources of vital traits in food crops.
His academic career spans 45 years, Shapiro is a Senior Fellow at UC Davis, College of Agriculture and Environmental Sciences. A former Fulbright Scholar and Ford Foundation Fellow, was a winner of the National Endowment for the Humanities Award and in 2007 Howard was made a Distinguished Fellow at the World Agroforestry Centre. He was Chairperson of the Board of the Agriculture Sustainability Institute at UC Davis for 10 years and in 2009 he was named recipient of The Award of Distinction from The College of Agriculture and Environmental Sciences, UC Davis. He served as the Co-Chairperson for the 1st and 2nd World Congress of Agroforestry.
Shapiro founded the African Orphan Crops Consortium (AOCC) and the African Plant Breeding Academy (AfPBA) in 2012. The effort will sequence, assemble and annotate 101 key food cultivars, which are the backbone of African nutrition. The AfPBA will train 150 mid-career African scientists in modern breeding technology for discovery and translation of new nutritionally improved varieties.
In October of 2018 he launched with Justin Seigel, the Foldit Aflatoxin Puzzle, with 460,000 online gamers to redesign and improve enzymes to degrade aflatoxin. Over 1,600,000 puzzle solution have been submitted for testing. Currently, 15 newly designed enzymes are in laboratory testing to detoxify aflatoxin in storage.
In 2021 he initiated the African Plant Breeding Academy. CRISPR with Jennifer Doudna, at the Innovative Genomics Institute, aiming to empower 100 African molecular scientists to deploy the latest CRISPR technologies (i.e. genome editing) to fast-track development of new sources of vital traits in food crops.
Speaking At
