Malcolm Elliott
Malcolm Elliott is the Founding Director of the Norman Borlaug Institute for Global Food Security. He sees the role of the Institute as facilitating the delivery of food security and creation of wealth by applying cutting-edge plant science techniques in crop improvement programs that will enable the sustainable enhancement of global agricultural production. Professor Elliott graduated with First Class Honors in Plant Sciences from the University of Wales in 1963. His PhD in plant biochemistry (1966) in the laboratory of Professor H.E. Street at the University of Wales was followed by a period as a Fulbright Scholar and Research Staff Biologist at Yale University (1967-1969). He returned from the USA to take the post of Lecturer in Plant Biochemistry at the University of Leicester (1969-1971), then he became Professor and Head of the School of Life Sciences at De Montfort University, Leicester (1971-1994). He was Chairman of the College of Deans at De Montfort University (1989-1993) then Founding Director of the Norman Borlaug Institute for Crop Improvement (1994 to date) and Editor in Chief of the BioMed Central open access journal Agriculture and Food Security (2011 to date). Professor Elliott is the author of several hundred research publications with emphasis on molecular biological approaches to cereal improvement and he has directed the Higher Degree program of more than fifty Graduate Students. He was honored by the award of the Fellowship of the Royal Society of Arts (1984), the Fellowship of the Royal Society of Biology (1989), the Charles University Medal (1992), the Gregor Mendel Gold Medal for Biological Sciences Research of Exceptional Merit (1993), the Jan Evangelista Purkyne Medal (1994) and the DSc (Honoris Causa) of the Bulgarian Academy of Agricultural Science (2006).