Luiz Antonio Barreto de Castro, is an Agronomist with a hybrid background. He worked many years in plant breeding before moving to plant physiology and plant molecular biology. He is PhD from UCDavis in Plant Physiology and has a Post Doc in Plant Molecular Biology from Robert B.Goldberg’s lab in UCLA.
For sixteen years he worked as a professor in Agronomy at the Federal Rural University of Rio de Janeiro. He established Plant Biotechnology in Brazil at CENARGEN in EMBRAPA early in the eighties where he worked for twenty five years as a scientist. His laboratory cloned and expressed the first plant gene in Brazil in 1991. He was the president of the Biosafety Commission in Brazil for three years from 1996 to 1998 and later was a member of the Biosafety Commission from 2005 to 2011 representing the Ministry of Science and Technology. He was the General Chief of CENARGEN/EMBRAPA during the years of 2000 to 2003 to establish the Genomic/Proteomic Program of EMBRAPA. He became a member of the Brazilian Academy of Science in 2003. He published extensively in the areas of Plant Breeding, Seed and Plant Physiology and Plant Molecular Biology and was responsible for the first Brazilian patents in plant genetic engineering.
In addition to his academic background he is an expert in plant patents, plant breeding rights, biodiversity and biosafety, having contributed directly for the design and approval of all related laws in Brazil in these subjects. He has served the best institutions nationally and internationally as a consultant in these areas. For eight years from 1991 to 1999 he served the Ministry of Science and Technology as Science National Secretary and later in the same function from 2005 to 2011. During the first period representing the Brazilian Government he successfully negotiated with the World Bank important Multidisciplinary Programs such as The Pilot Program for the Conservation of the Amazonian Rain Forest and The Brazilian Science & Technology Reform Program known in Brazil as PADCT – Science and Technology Development Support Program the largest Science and Technology Multidisciplinary Funding Program ever executed by the Brazilian Federal Government. He was the Executive Secretary for this Program from 1991 to 1999. He worked for the Getulio Vargas Foundation during the years of 2004 and 2005. He worked for the Getulio Vargas Foundation during the years 2004 and 2005 and was for many years the president of the Brazilian Society of Biotechnology. He is currently the Executive Coordinator in Brazil of the Northeastern Biotechnology Network – RENORBIO, which was established by him in 2004, shortly before he became the National Secretary for the Ministry of Science and Technology, in August 2005, in the area of Policies in Scientific Research and Development, position he held until February of 2011, as previously mentioned. He serves since 2006 in the Technical Committee of the World Bank for the Uganda Scientific Millenium Program and presently is the Technical Director of the Cotton Brazilian Institute.
Link to academic homepage (http://www.abc.org.br/~labcastro)
01/jun/2016