XXXVIII CONGRESO INTERNACIONAL ASEPELT

ALCALÁ DE HENARES, 25-28 de junio de 2025

Zero Hunger: Health, Production, Economics and Sustainability

PROGRAMA CIENTÍFICO PROVISIONAL

Excepto algunas actividades, todas las sesiones tendrán lugar en la Facultad de Ciencias Económicas, Empresariales y Turismo de la Universidad de Alcalá.

    Miércoles, 25 de junio 2025    

16.00-20.00       Seminario ASEPELT

José Manuel Santos Jaén. Universidad de Murcia

Uso de la Inteligencia Artificial en la Actividad Investigadora

Jose Manuel Santos Jaén es Profesor Titular del Departamento de Economía Financiera y Contabilidad en la Universidad de Murcia, con una sólida formación académica que incluye los títulos de Graduado en Administración y Dirección de Empresas, Graduado en Derecho, Diplomado en Ciencias Empresariales (Primer Premio Nacional), Máster en Auditoría de Cuentas, Máster en Dirección Financiera y Máster en Business Administration. Además, es Doctor en Ciencias Sociales, Jurídicas y de la Empresa.

Forma parte de las cátedras de Economía Social y de Responsabilidad Social Corporativa de la Universidad de Murcia, así como de la Cátedra de Publicaciones Científicas y/o Técnicas del Consejo General de Economistas.

El profesor Santos Jaén posee una trayectoria profesional de más de 18 años, desempeñando roles de liderazgo en departamentos económico-financieros y como Director General de una entidad sin fines lucrativos. Ha sido responsable máximo de los aspectos económicos de entidades del sector de la construcción y cuenta con experiencia como perito económico ante tribunales de justicia.

Siempre en la vanguardia de la investigación y la innovación docente, su amplia labor investigadora se ha visto recientemente ampliada con sus contribuciones en el ámbito de la Inteligencia Artificial, que se han plasmado en libros, artículos científicos, comunicaciones en congresos internacionales, e incluso en proyectos de investigación de innovación docente vinculada a la Inteligencia Artificial. Gran divulgador, el profesor Santos Jaén es uno de los keynote speakers más solicitados por las universidades y escuelas de negocio españolas en cuestiones de Inteligencia Artificial dirigida a investigadores y directivos de empresas.

18.00-19.30 REUNIÓN DEL CONSEJO EJECUTIVO DE ASEPELT

    Jueves, 26 de junio 2025    

• 9.00-18.00 Registro de participantes y entrega de documentación

• 10.00-10.30 INAUGURACIÓN

• 10.30-12.00 SESIONES PARALELAS (I)

• 12.00-12.30 

• 12.30-14.00  SESIÓN PLENARIA LAWRENCE KLEIN

• 14.00-16.00 

• 16.00-17.30 SESIONES PARALELAS (II)

• 17.30-18.00 

• 18:30-20.00   SESIÓN PLENARIA WASSILY LEONTIEF (Capilla de San Ildefonso – Rectorado UAH)

Prof. Ademola Adenle. Senior Special Adviser on Agricultural Innovation to Nigeria's Minister of Agriculture and Food Security

"Navigating the controversial GMO Debate in Africa: Balancing Risks and Opportunities

for Agricultural Development, Food Security, and Poverty Reduction"

Prof. Ademola Adenle currently serves as the Senior Special Adviser on Agricultural Innovation to Nigeria's Minister of Agriculture and Food Security. Before this role, he was a Guest Professor of Sustainability Science and Innovation Policy at the Department of Technology Management and Economics, Technical University of Denmark. With over 25 years of combined experience in teaching, stakeholder engagement, and international research, Prof. Adenle works at the intersection of natural and social sciences, focusing on sustainable agriculture, food security, renewable energy, technological innovation, and entrepreneurship. His interdisciplinary work on sustainable development has featured in a number of media outlets both at the local and international level.

Prof. Adenle has served as a faculty member in Nigeria and has conducted research and taught in the UK, USA, Japan, Denmark and Germany. He has led numerous national and international projects on food systems and regenerative agriculture. Notably, he spearheaded the largest study on the controversial topic of Genetic Modification (GM) agriculture in Africa, as well as one of the most extensive studies on climate change adaptation across the continent. Recently, in Nigeria, he led the development of the first National Agricultural Soil Management Policy (NASMP), funded by USAID's Feed the Future initiative. Prof. Adenle has had the honor of meeting and engaging with six African presidents to discuss innovative solutions to critical challenges facing the continent, including food insecurity, energy poverty, and infectious diseases.

His publications straddle scientific assessment and stakeholder engagement for overcoming sustainable development challenges and achieving global agenda in developing countries including countries in Africa. He has produced more than 70 publications in top international journals including Nature Biotechnology, Food Policy, Agriculture and Food Security and Ecological Economics, in addition to book chapters and books. He led a team of international experts to publish a book project (with Cambridge University Press, 2017) on risk analysis and governance of genetically modified organisms (GMOs) in developing world. He also successfully led over 70 experts around the world to complete a new book: “Science, Technology and Innovation (STI) for Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs): Insights from Agriculture, Health, Environment and Energy” (Oxford University Press, 2020), with forewords written by former Nigerian President Olusegun Obasanjo and Prof. Mohmoud Mohieldin (Senior Vice President of World Bank). The book is considered one of the first interdisciplinary works on STI within the framework of the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) agenda.

Prof. Adenle has won several awards. In 2020, he was selected as the Next Einstein Fellow (NEF) Laureate which was presented in his absentia by the President of Kenya, Uhuru Kenyatta. In early 2023, he was selected as Rockefeller Food System finalist in recognition of his leadership in global food system. Also, in 2023, he was the only African scholar that won the Sustainability 2022 Carbon Neutrality Award.

• 20.00 RECEPCIÓN POR LAS AUTORIDADES ACADÉMICAS DE LA UAH. VISITA UNIVERSIDAD Y COCTEL (Rectorado UAH)

    Viernes, 27 de junio de 2025    

• 9.00-18.00 Registro de participantes y entrega de documentación

• 10.00-12.00 CONFERENCIA PLENARIA Y MESA REDONDA

Fact and Fiction about GMOs and the Future of Biotechnology

When Monsanto first tried to introduce GMO seeds into Europe there was a backlash by the Green parties and their political allies, who feared that American agro-business was poised to take over their food supply. Thus began a massive campaign to discredit GMOs and scare people away from them. This has had disastrous consequences for one of the most promising technologies ever developed for improving food supplies. The success of the campaign has been particularly harmful in the developing world where GMO solutions for crop improvement are either being stymied or overly-regulated if not totally prevented. I will briefly describe the history of agriculture and plant breeding to show that the methods of GMO technology are safer, if anything, than traditional breeding approaches, which the Green parties would have us believe are perfectly safe. I will describe some of the GMO crops that can be beneficial to poor people in developing countries including the development of Golden Rice, which can help combat Vitamin A deficiency a nutrient problem that currently kills or physically impairs one to two million children every year. Finally, I will give some examples of how GMOs can solve a variety of problems facing humanity.

Sir Richard J. Roberts Ph.D. F.R.S. 1993 Nobel Laureate in Physiology or Medicine.

Scientific Officer New England Biolabs, Ipswich, MA USA

Dr. Richard J. Roberts is the Chief Scientific Officer at New England Biolabs, Beverly, Massachusetts. He was educated in England, attending St. Stephen's School and the City of Bath Boys' School in Bath before moving to the University of Sheffield where he obtained a B.Sc. in Chemistry in 1965 and a Ph.D. in Organic Chemistry in 1968. His postdoctoral research was carried out in Professor J.L. Strominger's laboratory at Harvard, where he studied the tRNAs that are involved in the biosynthesis of bacterial cell walls. From 1972 to 1992, he worked at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory, reaching the position of Assistant Director for Research under Dr. J.D. Watson. He began work on the newly discovered Type II restriction enzymes in 1972 and in the next few years more than 100 such enzymes were discovered and characterized in Dr. Roberts' laboratory. His laboratory has cloned the genes for several restriction enzymes and their cognate methylases and studies of these enzymes has been a major research theme. Dr. Roberts has also been involved in studies of Adenovirus-2 beginning with studies of transcription that led to the discovery of split genes and mRNA splicing in 1977. This was followed by efforts to deduce the DNA sequence of the Adenovirus-2 genome and a complete sequence of 35,937 nucleotides was obtained. This latter project required the extensive use of computer methods, both for the assembly of the sequence and its subsequent analysis. His laboratory pioneered the application of computers in this area and the further development of computer methods of protein and nucleic acid sequence analysis continues to be a major research focus. The field of DNA methyltransferases is also an area of active research interest and crystal structures for the HhaI methyltransferase both alone and in complex with DNA have been obtained in collaboration with Dr. X. Cheng. The latter complex is quite remarkable as the protein causes the target cytosine base to flip completely out of the helix so that it is accessible for chemical reaction. This extreme, but elegant, distortion of the double helix had not been seen previously.

He runs the REBASE database that contains information about all known bacterial and archaeal restriction enzymes and DNA methylases. A major interest at present is the semi-automatic identification of restriction enzyme and methylase genes within the GenBank database and the development of rapid methods to assay function. Already several new specificities have been found and it is clear that there are many more restriction enzyme genes in Nature than had been previously suspected. Using PacBio sequencing it is now possible to determine complete methylomes for bacteria and this is leading to the discovery of many novel enzymes.

Discusants:

Viviane Naimy. Notre Dame University at Louaize (Beirut, Lebanon)

Viviane Naimy is a Professor of Finance and Dean of the Faculty of Business Administration and Economics at Notre Dame University, Lebanon. An expert in financial econometrics and risk management, she has an extensive publication record in these fields. As Dean, she successfully led the AACSB and other programmatic accreditation processes. Passionate about poverty reduction, Naimy co-founded and presides over the Sustainable Farming Technology Association (SFT) with Nobel laureate Sir Richard Roberts, focusing on sustainable agriculture and actively working on poverty reduction through the SFT initiative in Lebanon. She also initiated the establishment of the Journal of Sustainable Economies in collaboration with Northeastern University, dedicated to addressing poverty and hunger. Additionally, Naimy leads the Beta Gamma Sigma chapter at Notre Dame University, Lebanon, and is a piano composer. 

Aldo Olcese

Ademola Adenle. Senior Special Adviser on Agricultural Innovation to Nigeria's Minister of Agriculture and Food Security

Prof. Ademola Adenle currently serves as the Senior Special Adviser on Agricultural Innovation to Nigeria's Minister of Agriculture and Food Security. Before this role, he was a Guest Professor of Sustainability Science and Innovation Policy at the Department of Technology Management and Economics, Technical University of Denmark. With over 25 years of combined experience in teaching, stakeholder engagement, and international research, Prof. Adenle works at the intersection of natural and social sciences, focusing on sustainable agriculture, food security, renewable energy, technological innovation, and entrepreneurship. His interdisciplinary work on sustainable development has featured in a number of media outlets both at the local and international level.

Prof. Adenle has served as a faculty member in Nigeria and has conducted research and taught in the UK, USA, Japan, Denmark and Germany. He has led numerous national and international projects on food systems and regenerative agriculture. Notably, he spearheaded the largest study on the controversial topic of Genetic Modification (GM) agriculture in Africa, as well as one of the most extensive studies on climate change adaptation across the continent. Recently, in Nigeria, he led the development of the first National Agricultural Soil Management Policy (NASMP), funded by USAID's Feed the Future initiative. Prof. Adenle has had the honor of meeting and engaging with six African presidents to discuss innovative solutions to critical challenges facing the continent, including food insecurity, energy poverty, and infectious diseases.

His publications straddle scientific assessment and stakeholder engagement for overcoming sustainable development challenges and achieving global agenda in developing countries including countries in Africa. He has produced more than 70 publications in top international journals including Nature Biotechnology, Food Policy, Agriculture and Food Security and Ecological Economics, in addition to book chapters and books. He led a team of international experts to publish a book project (with Cambridge University Press, 2017) on risk analysis and governance of genetically modified organisms (GMOs) in developing world. He also successfully led over 70 experts around the world to complete a new book: “Science, Technology and Innovation (STI) for Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs): Insights from Agriculture, Health, Environment and Energy” (Oxford University Press, 2020), with forewords written by former Nigerian President Olusegun Obasanjo and Prof. Mohmoud Mohieldin (Senior Vice President of World Bank). The book is considered one of the first interdisciplinary works on STI within the framework of the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) agenda.

Prof. Adenle has won several awards. In 2020, he was selected as the Next Einstein Fellow (NEF) Laureate which was presented in his absentia by the President of Kenya, Uhuru Kenyatta. In early 2023, he was selected as Rockefeller Food System finalist in recognition of his leadership in global food system. Also, in 2023, he was the only African scholar that won the Sustainability 2022 Carbon Neutrality Award.

Moderador:

José Manuel Calvo Fernández. Presidente del Instituto de Cooperación Internacional de la Real Academia de Doctores

• 12.00-12.30

• 12.30-14.00 SESIONES PARALELAS (III)

• 14.00-16.00 

• 16.00-17.30 SESIONES PARALELAS (IV)

• 17.30-18.00 

• 18.00-19:30 SESIONES PARALELAS (V)

• 19.30 ASAMBLEA GENERAL DE ASEPELT

• 21.30 CENA DE GALA, HOMENAJES Y ENTREGA DE PREMIOS