Dr Hale Ann Tufan
International Programs, College of Agriculture and Life Sciences, Cornell University, United States.
Integrating gender expertise into interventions for improved agriculture and nutrition (download presentation here 
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Topic D: Building communities of gender expertise and leadership
The NextGeneration Cassava Project (download presentation here)
Knowledge Exchange Forum: Gender and Agriculture
Hale Ann Tufan completed her PhD in molecular plant pathogen interactions at the John Innes Centre, UK in 2010. The same year she was awarded a Women in Triticum award to recognize her contributions to wheat research and commitment to international agricultural development. After her PhD she joined the CIMMYT International Winter Wheat Improvement Program, working in breeding program management, national and international field data collection and capacity building for visiting scientists.
From 2010 to 2011 she held a Research Fellowship with the University of East Anglia, School of International Development, where she examined science policies and practices effecting molecular marker adoption by public sector wheat breeding programs in Turkey and Kenya. In 2012, to deepen her knowledge around development debates in Sub-Saharan Africa, she completed a certificate program on Africa and International Development from the University of Edinburgh. The same year she joined International Programs, Cornell University to manage the NEXTGEN Cassava project, funded by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and UK Department for International Development. For this project, she designed and drives the NEXTGEN Cassava “Gender-Responsive Cassava Breeding” initiative to reach women smallholder farmers in Uganda and Nigeria to better understand the gender needs and impacts in these communities and work with NARS to mainstream and prioritize end-user preferences into breeding program design and implementation. For this initiative she also designed and co-supervised students on a plant breeding-gender studies interdisciplinary scholarship in partnership with School of Women and Gender Studies at Makerere University, Uganda. She has also co-designed and overseen a mixed method, interdisciplinary survey to capture gender-disaggregated cassava trait preferences in Nigerian smallholder cassava producing communities, in close collaboration with the CGIAR Roots, Tubers and Bananas CRP gender focal points. Her current interests focus around innovative gender training course design specifically for agricultural researchers in Sub-Saharan Africa.