John Vontas
Institute Molecular Biology and Biotechnology – FORTH, Greece
John Vontas is the Director of the Institute of Molecular Biology and Biotechnology – Foundation for Research and Technology and Professor Pesticide Science at the Agricultural University of Athens. His research focuses on biotechnology based approaches for the control of disease vectors and agricultural pests, with emphasis on the molecular mechanisms by which insects develop resistance to insecticides and the identification of novel insecticide targets. He has published many papers including ones in high profile journals and gave a large number of invited plenary and keynote talks worldwide. He teaches in national and international postgraduate programs and has supervised >30 PhD students and many young researchers (post-doc), many of whom pursue careers in academia and industry. He is Associate Editor in Pesticide Biochemistry and Physiology and Editorial Board member in several journals in his field (IBMB etc). He has organized many international conferences. He has been panel member in many funding organizations (ERC, FWO, ANR..). He has received many major grants from Industry (BAYER, SYNGENTA, ..) and coordinated large international European consortia in the field of plant protection.