Becker, Barbara, Dr.

Barbara Becker is the Managing Director of the North-South Centre of the ETH Zurich which deals with research collaboration with developing countries and countries in transition. A large part of the programme is focused on the collaboration with International Agricultural Research Centres of the CGIAR.

Barbara Becker’s professional background is in tropical agro-ecology with research on vegetation ecology of Andean land use systems in Peru, Bolivia and Colombia and on edible wild plants in arid zones of Africa.

Her experience in research management is based on former positions with the German government as a liaison officer for international agricultural research, and as a project coordinator for an information system on genetic resources.

She serves on the Boards of Trustees of the International Institute of Tropical Agriculture (IITA) and of the African Rice Centre (WARDA). Until 2008, she was Vice-Chair of the Steering Committee of the European Forum for Agricultural Research for Development (EFARD) and member of the Steering Committee of the Global Forum for Agricultural Research (GFAR).