Professor Wayne Powell is Principal and Chief Executive of Scotland’s Rural College (SRUC), the UK’s leading agri-food-environment, tertiary education institution.
His previous roles include Chief Science Officer at CGIAR, a global agri-food partnership, Professor & Founding Director of the Institute of Biological, Environmental and Rural Sciences (IBERS), Aberystwyth University, Deputy Director of the Scottish Crop Research Institute and CEO & Director NIAB, Cambridge. He is a Senior Fullbright Scholar and worked for the DuPont Company in Wilmington, Delaware, USA.
Professor Wayne Powell has more than 30 years’ experience working in the field of contemporary plant genetics and has extensive experience leading organisational and cultural change programmes.
Wayne is a member of Scotland’s Science Advisory Council and Board member of NatureScot. Until recently he was a member of both DEFRA and DFID’s Science Advisory Council and Convenor of the Research and Knowledge Exchange Committee of Universities Scotland. He maintains an active research group and is an elected Fellow of the Learned Society of Wales and the Royal Society of Edinburgh.
Wayne is Chair of Interface: Interface is Scotland’s national knowledge-exchange organisation, connecting businesses and other organisations with expertise, facilities and research capability across Scotland’s universities, research institutes and colleges