John Reich

Scientific Program Director @Foundation for Food & Agriculture Research

Washington, DC, US

Joined FFAR at the onset, greatly contributing to shaping operations, strategic research directions, funding models, and partnerships. Funded scientific programs on diverse topics such as nutrition security, computational modeling, supply chain logistics, biology, and agricultural production systems. As Director of Urban Food Systems, I developed and implemented a $50M portfolio of public-private funding, building partnerships through thought leadership, consensus building, and program co-development with executive level industry stakeholders, government officials, non-profit(s), and academia Key Accomplishments• Conceived and created FFAR’s first public-private consortium, Crops of the Future, with initial investments of $20M. This consortium serves as a FFAR model for building public-private consortia and as an organizational value proposition. FFAR now has over 6 research consortia.• Created and implemented the Precision Indoor Plants Collaborative, shifting the public research focus from systems design to plant adaptation for indoor environments. Partners leverage over 1:30 (partner : consortium) investments in a $15M research portfolio and benefit from sharing data between industry competitors.• Developed Tipping Points, one of the first competitive US grants programs largely focused on participatory modeling in food systems research to identify system leverage points to promote long-term nutrition equity. This program leveraged $34M in existing resources, and discoveries are used to advise government leaders. Tipping Points has led to funding a novel intervention focused on transforming communities by bridging community and organizational power.• Co-developed the Breakthrough Crop Challenge, the initial phase of a funding strategy to increase public and private investment in the development of neglected crops through identification of nutritious crops with the most potential economic value for the public and private sectors.

University of Utah

Bachelor's degree, Biology, General

The University of Texas at Austin

Doctor of Philosophy (Ph.D.), Cell/Cellular and Molecular Biology