Professor John Clifton-Brown

Aberystwyth University

Prof. Dr. John Clifton-Brown, took up the professorship for NAWARO in Dec 2021. He read Natural Science from 1988 to 1992 at Trinity College Dublin (Ireland) specialising in plant science and worked on his PhD from 1993 to 1997 on the Asian Elephant Grass Miscanthus. After completing his PhD under the supervision of Prof. Mike Jones he took up a position in University of Hohenheim (Stuttgart) as the assistant coordinator of the European Miscanthus Improvement programme. In 2000, when he returned to Trinity College Dublin to lecture in plant ecophysiology. While in this post he helped set up and run two projects on greenhouse gas emissions from agriculture (where the trials were conducted at Teagasc headquarters in Carlow), which he led until 2004. In 2004 he moved to Aberystwyth to build up a new breeding programme for Miscanthus, a position he held for 17 years. During this period he led cooperation between the private and public sectors to develop Miscanthus as one of the leading perennial biomass crops. In Oct 2021, varieties produced by his breeding programme were licenced and registered to commercial partners. He has been involved in many EU projects and has a special interest in the impact of climate change on biomass production. In JLU he will develop research and teaching in NAWARO with the aim of inspiring the next generation of Bioeconomists who will play their part in addressing the Global challenges of the 21st century.