Prof. Justin Pita is the WAVE program’s Executive Director as well as the Country Director for WAVE Côte d’Ivoire. He serves as an associate Professor at Université Félix HOUPHOUËT-BOIGNY (Côte d’Ivoire) and is an adjunct Professor at the Department of Plant Pathology and Environmental Microbiology in the College of Agricultural Sciences of Pennsylvania State University (USA)…
Prof. Pita has over 15 years’ experience conducting research on viral disease epidemiology and virus evolution at highly regarded institutions including the Scripps Research Institute (San Diego, California, USA), The Donald Danforth Plant Science Center (St-Louis, Missouri, USA), The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (Atlanta, Georgia, USA/Field Station of Abidjan, Côte d’Ivoire), The Samuel Roberts Noble Foundation (Ardmore, Oklahoma, USA), and the Huck Institute of The Life Sciences (Center for Infectious Disease Dynamics, Pennsylvania State University, USA). Driven by his strong Pan African commitment to agricultural research and equipped with a vast experience in senior leadership both on the African continent and globally, Prof. Pita has built a strong global agricultural research network involving several institutions from East, West and Central Africa, Europe and America for a successful implementation of the WAVE program for food security for all in Africa. He also serves as a member of the Steering Committee of African Women in Agriculture Research and Development (AWARD), a gender responsive agricultural innovation program working toward agriculture-driven prosperity for Africa, by investing in African women scientists and agricultural research institutions to deliver gender-responsive agricultural research and development.