Work Packages

Communications specialist with hands-on experience in Horizon projects, focused on clear messaging, stakeholder engagement, website content management, and behind-the-scenes coordination. Skilled in translating complex project results into accessible stories, maintaining project websites, supporting partners, and ensuring smooth communication workflows. Passionate about the “back work” that keeps EU projects meaningful, organised, and connected to real people.

Kiwoong Nam is an evolutionary biologist working at UMR-DGIMI, which is jointly established between INRAE and the University of Montpellier. He focuses on invasion, speciation, and insecticide resistance in pest insects by tracing distinct evolutionary footprints. These evolutionary events are not independent of each other, and are often prompted by human activities, such as trade, the cultivation of crops, and the application of plant protection products, including insecticides and pheromone lures. Hence, genomic analysis is one of the keys to reveal real-time evolution in pest insects.

UNIBS

Full Professor of General and Applied Entomology at the University of Brescia (Italy). His research interests include: (i) methods and models for the management of pest and vector populations; (ii) development of eco-epidemiological methods and models for managing plant, animal, and human diseases; (iii) environmental risk assessment and sustainability; (iv) sustainable development in Sub-Saharan Africa. He is a member of numerous technical-scientific committees and working groups of research institutions and national and international agencies. He is the author of more than 350 scientific publications and has given more than 230 contributions to conferences and congresses.

Ecobertura

Dr. Fernando Pinacho Crisostomo holds M.Sc. and Ph.D. degrees in Organic Chemistry, focusing on the synthesis of bioactive compounds and developing new methodologies for natural product synthesis. His postdoctoral work at Scripps Research Institute and UC San Diego (UCSD) centered on understanding noncovalent molecular interactions and applying these fundamental concepts to Medicinal Chemistry. After research roles at the Spanish National Research Council (CSIC) and the University of La Laguna, Dr. Pinacho Crisostomo transitioned to entrepreneurship. He is the founder of Ecobertura, a company dedicated to the synthesis of insect pheromones and the development of novel monitoring techniques for pest presence using modern communication technology.

CABI

Marc is an entomologist leading the section “Risk analysis and Invasion Ecology” at CABI in Switzerland. He has 36 years’ experience in applied and environmental entomology, particularly in the field of ecology and management of invasive species, including biological control and integrated pest management, risk analysis and impact assessment. He has conducted projects in more than 30 countries in four continents and has worked on the biological control of the fall armyworm since 2018.

BPI

Dr Panagiotis Milonas, is the Director General of BPI. Dr Milonas is specializing in insect behavioral ecology, chemical ecology, integrated pest management and biological control. He has a Ph.D. in Agricultural Entomology (2002) and an MSc degree in Crop Protection (1996) from Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, Greece. He has conducted postdoctoral research in chemical ecology Natural Products at the National Scientific Research Center “DEMOCRITUS” and in behavioral ecology at the University of Minnesota, USA with a fellowship from OECD and Fulbright foundation in 2007 and 2012 respectively. He is/was the Project Manager or participates in several National or International Projects. Since July 2018 is a member of the Plant Health Panel of the European Food Safety Authority (EFSA). He has authored numerous scientific publications, reports, and opinions in the fields of plant health and entomology.

ICIA

Eva Dorta Pérez holds a PhD (2013, ICIA) on optimizing antioxidant extraction from mango by-products (FPI-INIA fellowship). She completed a Fondecyt Postdoctoral Fellowship at the Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile, leading later the Fondecyt project on bioactive meat peptides. Her research spans functional ingredients, natural antioxidants, and sustainable valorization of agro-industrial residues, with experience in industry-linked projects She held a postdoctoral position at the Complutense University of Madrid and, since 2023, serves as Senior Agricultural Researcher at the Government of the Canary Islands, leading multidisciplinary EU-funded projects.

Pensoft Publishers

Nikolay Mehandzhiyski is a senior communication expert, working at Pensoft Publishers, with experience coordinating communication and dissemination activities in several Horizon 2020 and Horizon Europe projects.

INRAE

Anne-Nathalie Volkoff is a Senior Researcher at DGIMI, an INRAE-UM research unit studying interactions between insect pests and their biotic (plants, pathogens, parasites) and abiotic (temperature) environments, with a focus on the lepidopteran pest Spodoptera frugiperda.
Her research centers on the biology of natural enemies and the molecular mechanisms of host–parasitoid interactions, particularly those mediated by symbiotic viruses essential for parasitism success, which she investigates using genomics and functional genomics approaches.