At the its final meeting at the ISSCT XXXII Centennial Congress, the Executive Committee elected Professor Monalisa Sampaio Carneiro, Specialist in Biotechnology at the Universidade Federal de San Carlos – UFSCar, São Paulo, Brazil, as Chair Executive Committee and as per ISSCT Constitution she will also chair the Council, the apex body of ISSCT.
It is the first time that a woman will be chairing the ISSCT Governance bodies since its creation in 1924.
Prof. Monalisa Sampaio Carneiro has been a member of ISSCT for many years and was elected to the Executive Committee in 2019. A short CV is given below:
Monalisa Sampaio Carneiro is a Full Professor at the Federal University of São Carlos (UFSCar), Brazil, where she is dedicated to teaching and mentoring undergraduate and graduate students, offering courses in biotechnology, genetic engineering, biosafety, and bioinformatics, as well as supervising research projects focused on innovation in the sugarcane sector. She is a Research Productivity Fellow of the Brazilian National Council for Scientific and Technological Development (CNPq) with more than 50 published scientific papers and the development of 11 sugarcane varieties. Former coordinator of both the Undergraduate in Biotechnology and the Graduate Program in Plant Production and Associated Bioprocesses at UFSCar.
She holds a Bachelor’s and Master’s degree in Agronomy from the Federal University of Bahia and earned her Ph.D. in Genetics and Plant Breeding from the Luiz de Queiroz College of Agriculture (ESALQ/USP) in 2001. She works on the development of RB sugarcane varieties within the Interuniversity Network for the Development of the Sugar-Energy Sector (RIDESA), where she serves as Biotechnology Leader at RIDESA/UFSCar. Her research focuses on molecular breeding and sugarcane biotechnology, with emphasis on genomic-assisted selection, high-throughput phenotyping, genetic diversity analysis, molecular fingerprinting, and genetically modified sugarcane varieties.
Professor Carneiro has been a member of the International Society of Sugarcane Technologists (ISSCT) since 2010, having first participated in the XXVII ISSCT Congress in Veracruz, Mexico. She was part of the Local Organizing Committee of the 10th Germplasm & Breeding / 7th Molecular Biology Workshop held in Maceió, Brazil, in 2011, and later served on the Germplasm & Breeding Committee in 2016 and 2019. Since 2019, she has been a member of the ISSCT Executive Committee.