Francisco Vilela Pereira
R&D
Francisco is an R&D professional in VITO’s Climate Impacts team. As an agricultural engineer by training (MSc Biosystems Engineering from Wageningen University & Research) and having prior experience in the businesses of farm software and agri-insurance, his work now focusses on developing climate tools and services for the agricultural sector.
He joined VITO in 2022 and is working to bundle VITO’s climate datasets with crop models and indicators, to provide information about future climate impacts in food production. He contributes to the advancement of the CLIMTAG tool and its agri-climatic capabilities, namely with the introduction of crop suitability indicators and maps for assessing long-term climate impacts in crop distribution, and supports VITO’s climate risks research and services.
This climate knowledge is shared with agricultural stakeholders in governments, companies, farmers, NGOs and other research organizations, through several projects in Africa, Europe and South/Central America that Francisco helps to raise and manage. He has taken a leading role in the coordination of StratAdapt-Mali (VIKAP), as well as in assignments for ENABEL in Mozambique and FAO in Malawi. He leads the CLIM team’s involvement in the PAN-CAFÉ (VIKAP), Emphasis-BE (FWO) and the CENTAUR (HEU) projects.
Francisco is driven by the prospect of creating better informed and climate-resilient food systems worldwide.
