About the Authors
About Dr. Walter R. Fehr
Walter R. Fehr is an emeritus Charles F. Curtiss Distinguished Professor of Agriculture and Life Sciences, the highest academic honor at Iowa State University (ISU). He obtained graduate degrees in plant breeding from the University of Minnesota and Iowa State University. From 1967 to 2018, he was a faculty member in the Department of Agronomy at ISU where he taught undergraduate and graduate plant breeding courses and conducted research specializing in soybean breeding and genetics. He served as the major professor for 92 students who obtained MS and PhD degrees and authored 270 articles in refereed scientific journals, three books, and 11 book chapters. As a soybean breeder, he developed more than 200 cultivars and was awarded 28 US patents for development of unique genetic traits related to soybean oil quality.
About Dr. Walter Suza
Walter P. Suza is the George Washington Carver Endowed Chair and an Adjunct Professor at Iowa State University. He holds a Ph.D. in plant sciences, specializing in molecular physiology, from the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, where his doctoral research identified the role of the JASMONATE RESISTANT 1 (JAR1) gene in the production of jasmonoyl-isoleucine (JA-Ile) in wound response signaling in Arabidopsis and tomato. His postdoctoral work includes elucidating the spatial and temporal regulation of sterol biosynthesis in Nicotiana benthamiana. His current research applies genetic, physiological, molecular, and biochemical approaches to understand how phytosterols modulate cellular metabolism in maize and soybean. He teaches courses in Genetics and Biotechnology, Crop Physiology, and World Food Issues in the Department of Agronomy. In addition to co-developing courses for Iowa State’s Distance Master’s Program in Plant Breeding, he served for eight years as Director of Plant Breeding E-Learning in Africa (PBEA), expanding access to open educational resources in crop genetic improvement. His international experience includes work in central and southern Africa with the World Food Programme in Angola and UNICEF in Zimbabwe, where he focused on food security assessment, mapping vulnerable households, drought evaluation, and coordination of food aid projects. In 2024, he received the World Food Prize Top Agri-Food Pioneer Award.
