Dr Smitha Krishnan

Senior Scientist, Alliance of Bioversity and CIAT

Dr Smitha Krishnan is a Senior Scientist at the Alliance of Bioversity and CIAT and has been with the organisation since 2019. She is an ecologist focusing on agricultural diversification and ecosystem service provisioning through biodiversity conservation. Her research interests include pollination biology, plant-animal interactions, restoration, soil-plant relationships and sustainable livelihoods. She is also one of the founding members of Indian Pollinator Initiative.

Dr Krishnan has a PhD from ETH Zürich (Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Zurich), Switzerland, where she researched pollination services and coffee production in a forested landscape mosaic in the Western Ghats, a biodiversity hotspot. Currently, in addition to working on projects on agroecology, pollination services, nature-based solutions and fruit trees, she is also coordinating the development of diversity for restoration tool, a decision support tool for tree-based restoration or planting activities for India.

She brings nearly 20 years of research experience in pollination ecology, focusing on the essential ecosystem services provided by insects thriving in seminatural habitats and their contributions to neighbouring agricultural landscapes.