Federico Ceballos-Sierra

Prior to starting my PhD, I grew coffee in my personal farm and held field agronomist and extension agent positions across Colombia. Through this work I was exposed to the social and economic issues facing rural communities. I took these issues to the Department of Agricultural and Consumer Economics of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and built a research program that (i) provides evidence-based tools for addressing the challenges of climate variability for coffee cultivation, (ii) proposes novel methods for technology diffusion that leverage within-family channels of information exchange, and (iii) improves the understanding of the impact of conflict resolution processes on legal and illegal economic activity in multilateral conflicts. Simultaneously, I have led grant-writing activities that resulted in research projects in Nicaragua and at the International Center for Tropical Agriculture (CIAT) in Colombia. I am currently working at the Alliance of Bioversity and CIAT based in Tegucigalpa, Honduras.