Professor Heribert Hirt studied biochemistry at the University of Cape Town, South Africa, and then received his Ph.D. in biochemistry from the University of Vienna, Austria, in 1987. After Postdoctoral Fellowships at the Universities of Oxford, U.K., and Wageningen, Netherlands, he became a Professor of Genetics at the University of Vienna and Vice Director of the Gregor Mendel Institute. In 2007, he was nominated Director of the INRA Plant Genomics Institute in Paris, France, and of the Center for Desert Agriculture at KAUST in 2014. Since 2022, he is also speaker of the PlantACT! initiative, a global think tank, that develops plant-based solutions to climate change (https://www.plant-act.org/). 

Professor Hirt has dedicated his career to understanding how plants survive under abiotic or biotic stress conditions (>300 publications, h-index 105). His current research is focused on the symbiosis of plants, microbes, and soils in deserts and how these factors can contribute to crop plants resilience to abiotic or biotic stress conditions (https://www.heribert-hirt.org/). His work also aims to provide sustainable solutions to reestablish forestation and sustainable carbon sequestration in arid regions of the world.