Dr. Channa S. Prakash is a Dean of the College of Arts and Sciences (CAS) at Tuskegee University (USA) where he has served as faculty since 1989, and is professor of crop genetics, biotechnology and genomics  who is well recognized for mentoring under‐represented minority students. As Chief Academic Officer of the largest college on campus, he oversees nine departments and two programs spanning liberal arts and STEM subjects involving nearly 100 faculty members. His recent initiative was to expand eLearning offerings – increasing summer online courses from in 2015 to 31 courses in 2016. Along with the college of agriculture, he has overseen a new PhD program in Integrative Public Policy and Development.  Under Dr. Prakash’s watch, two new undergraduate degree programs in music and art have been launched with support from Mellon Foundation. External grant funding for projects in the college has doubled under his watch. Dr. Prakash’s key activities also include strategic planning, recruitment, enrollment management and retention plans; coordinating a range of tasks toward program excellence of the college; 

Dr. Prakash’s research expertise is on genetic improvement research on food crops of importance to developing countries. His lab was among the first to develop transgenic sweetpotato and peanut plants, and conduct pioneering genomic studies on peanut. His current research includes gene editing of crops using CRISPR/Cas9 system.   

Dr. Prakash has also been actively involved in enhancing the societal awareness of food biotechnology issues around the world. Dr. Prakash serves as Editor‐in‐chief of the journal GM Crops &Food. Dr. Prakash is winner of the prestigious 2015 Borlaug CAST Communication Award as according to CAST, he has “arguably done more than anyone else in academia or industry to promote agricultural technologies that can help feed the world’s growing population.” He was also recognized by Huffington Post as among the Top 30 social influencers in biopharma and biotech. He has an active presence in the social media, impacting nearly half million readers per month on Twitter (@agbioworld).   

Dr. Prakash is widely recognized as the leading proponent of science‐based agricultural development, especially in the use of molecular techniques including genetically modified crops. He provides technical, societal and ethical perspectives on the issue through his lectures and writings and on social media. He was instrumental in catalyzing the scientific community in many countries to get involved in public outreach on agbiotech issues. He is a popular speaker and his views and writing were covered in numerous newspapers and magazines. He has delivered nearly 1000 public lectures across 80 countries including venues such as Aspen Ideas Festival, World Food Prize, UN Forum on Sustainable Development, FAO, US Congress, and World Bank. He was invited three times to deliver lectures at the Vatican, and was fortunate to have an audience with Pope Francis and explain him the benefits of Golden Rice.  He has won numerous prestigious awards including the Morrison‐Evans Outstanding Scientist Award. He served as panel manager for the USDA’s biotechnology risk assessment grant program, chaired the minority affairs committee of the American Society for Plant Biology, and served on the USDA Advisory Committee on Agricultural Biotechnology with Ag Secretaries Dan Glickman and Ann Veneman.