Bernard Vanlauwe is the Deputy Director General for Research for Development of the International Institute of Tropical Agriculture (IITA). He joined IITA in Kenya in 2012 to lead the Central Africa hub and the Natural Resource Management research area. He obtained his PhD in 1996 in Applied Biological Sciences from the Catholic University of Leuven, Belgium and has published over 200 papers in scientific journals and (co-) supervised over 40 PhD students. He is currently leading the Excellence in Agronomy Initiative of the CGIAR. His main research has focused on the development and scaling of Integrated Soil Fertility Management options for smallholder farmers in key farming systems of sub-Saharan Africa.