Professor Shimelis Hussein is an Ethiopian-born South African. He enrolled as a PhD student at the University of the Free State in 2000 and graduated in 2003. He has an MSc in Plant Breeding from Wageningen University in the Netherlands in 1996, and a BSc in Plant Sciences from Haramaya University in Ethiopia in 1991.
He has over 30 years of teaching and research experience in Africa. He is a Full Professor of Plant Breeding and the current Director of the African Centre for Crop Improvement at the University of KwaZulu-Natal (UKZN).
He has made significant, ongoing career contributions, including the development of new crop varieties and the training of 64 PhD- and 38 MSc-level agricultural scientists. He is a top-performing and established researcher at UKZN. He holds a C-1 NRF rating. He has a Scopus H-index of 40, a Web of Science H-index of 34, and a Google Scholar H-index of 62. He has excellent partnerships with National Agricultural Research and Extension Systems in 20 African countries, public and private sector funders, international research centres and various universities. He is a founding member and an expert voice in a Pan-Africa Demand-led Breeding (DLB) initiative.
Shimelis has earned several accolades, including Fellowship of the African Academy of Sciences (AAS), Member of the Academy of Science of South Africa (ASSAf), selection as a finalist for the National Science and Technology Forum (NSTF)-South32 Lifetime Award, election as an Associate Fellow of the Ethiopian Academy of Sciences, recognition for the eighth consecutive year to current as one of UKZN’s top 30 published researchers, and recognition as one of Africa’s 20 most influential plant breeders of 2020 by the Southern Africa Plant Breeders’ Association. Shimelis is a member of the Governing Board of the International Crops Research Institute for the Semi-Arid Tropics (ICRISAT) based in Hyderabad/India, and provides insight and guidance to this global agency on dryland agricultural systems.
Prof Shimelis is currently leading the African Centre for Crop Improvement at the University of KwaZulu-Natal, where he has provided extensive scientific training to young African crop scientists/plant breeders, equipping them with critical skills. He is a distinguished alumnus of the UFS and a well-established researcher with a substantial record of human capacity development and research outputs in Plant Breeding. He enjoys considerable international recognition for his research. He has over 30 years of teaching, research, and leadership experience in Plant Breeding. He has been actively involved in the training of the new generation of scientists in Africa, based at the University of KwaZulu-Natal's School of Agriculture and Science.
He has successfully trained over 64 PhD and 38 MSc new generation plant breeders and crop scientists from 20 African countries, greatly boosting the R&D capacity in plant breeding/crop science in Africa. Presently, he is mentoring 25 doctoral and five MSc students and 2 postdoctoral fellows from over 20 African countries.
Prof Shimelis is a leading African researcher, allowing him to actively and successfully contribute to the importance of Crop Science/Plant Breeding in Africa. As a result, he and his postgraduate students developed and released several novel crop varieties in Africa. He thereby addressed a major need to identify and breed particularly plants with better stress tolerance, allowing the African farming community to supply them with plant material better adapted to a predicted future climate change.
Prof Shimelis has published extensively in high-impact journals in crop sciences and breeding and has 15,000 Google Scholar citations to date and an h-index of 40 in Scopus.
Prof Shimelis' standing as a researcher has led to substantial financial support for his research activities from PlantBio Trust and TIA, the National Research Foundation, and the Generation Challenge Programme (GCP). He also served on the research planning committee of the Agricultural Research Council-Small Grain Institute and as a panel member of the Maize Trust Production and Climate Change for several years. He has also been actively involved in regionally and internationally coordinated projects with more than 20 National Agricultural Research and Extension Systems (NARES) and universities in Africa, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), the University of Missouri, the University of Queensland, the Syngenta Foundation for Sustainable Agriculture, and the French Agricultural Research Centre for International Development.
Prof. Shimelis is also a founder and active member of the Pan-African Demand-Led Breeding (DLB) Leadership Team. DLB advances the business of breeding through demand-led plant breeding education and research in Africa, including the importance of accounting for gender and diversity in the design of new varieties. He is recognized as fellow of the African Academy of Sciences (AAS), Member of the Academy of Science of South Africa (ASSAf), selection as a finalist for the National Science and Technology Forum (NSTF)-South32 Lifetime Award, elected as an Associate Fellow of the Ethiopian Academy of Sciences, recognition for the eighth consecutive year as one of UKZN’s top 30 published researchers, and recognition as one of Africa’s 20 most influential plant breeders of 2020 by the Southern Africa Plant Breeders’ Association.
Prof. Shimelis has recently been appointed to the Governing Board of the International Crops Research Institute for the Semi-Arid Tropics (ICRISAT) to provide insight and guidance on its strategic goals.