Mario Herrero is a professor of sustainable food systems and global change in the Department of Global Development and a Nancy and Peter Meinig Family Investigator in the Life Sciences. At Cornell Atkinson, he serves as a Cornell Atkinson Scholar.

His research focuses on increasing the sustainability of food systems for the benefit of humans and ecosystems. He works in the areas of sustainable intensification of agriculture, climate mitigation and adaptation, livestock systems, and healthy and sustainable diets.

Professor Herrero is a regular contributor to important global initiatives at the heart of the sustainability of global food systems, such as the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the Lancet Commission on Obesity and the EAT-Lancet Commission on healthy diets from sustainable food systems. He has worked extensively in Africa, Latin America and Asia. Before joining Cornell, he was Chief Scientist of Sustainability, for Australia’s National Science Agency, the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation (CSIRO).

Professor Herrero has published more than 170 peer-reviewed publications and over 300 publications in his areas of expertise. He is currently on the editorial boards of The Lancet Planetary Health, Agricultural Systems, Global Food Security, Agriculture and Food Security, Tropical Grasslands, Frontiers in Sustainable Food Systems, and has been a guest editor for the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences journal (PNAS).

Professor Herrero is a Corresponding Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh, an Associate Fellow of Chatham House, the Royal Institute of International Affairs, and an Honorary Professor of Agriculture and Food Innovation at the University of Queensland, Australia.