Sebsebe Demissew

Sebsebe Demissew at the Royal Society admissions day in London, July 2018
Born (1953-06-14) June 14, 1953[1]
Alma materAddis Ababa University (BSc, MSc)
University of Uppsala (PhD)
Known forFlora of Ethiopia and Eritrea
AwardsKew International Medal (2016)[2][3]
Foreign Member of the Royal Society (2018)
Scientific career
FieldsBotany
Systematics
InstitutionsAddis Ababa University
ThesisThe genus Maytenus (Celastraceae) in NE tropical Africa and tropical Arabia (1985)
Author abbrev. (botany)Sebsebe

Sebsebe Demissew (born June 14, 1953)[1] is a Professor of Plant Systematics and Biodiversity at Addis Ababa University and Executive Director of the Gullele Botanic Garden in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia.[4][1][5]

Education

Demissew was educated at Addis Ababa University where he was awarded a Bachelor of Science degree in Biology in 1977 followed by a Master of Science degree in Botany 1980.[1] He completed postgraduate study at Uppsala University in Sweden where he was awarded a PhD in 1985 for research on the botany of the Maytenus genus of plants in tropical Africa and Arabia.[6]

Career and research

Demissew served as the Leader of the Flora of Ethiopia and Eritrea between 1996 until its completion in 2009 in collaboration with Inga Hedberg in which 6000 species with 10% endemic species are documented; the project involved 91 scientists from 17 countries. It is one of the few completed Floras in Africa.[4]

Demissew has participated in a number of successful collaborative research projects with universities in Europe and Africa including Oslo, Norway with Inger Nordal; Copenhagen, Denmark with Ib Friis; Marburg, Germany: the University of Leicester and Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, UK; National Museums of Kenya, and South African National Botanical Institute in Cape Town & Pretoria, South Africa. These projects have addressed floristics, biosystematics, vegetation, evolution in Afro alpine environments and under-utilized indigenous crops. involving postgraduate students.[4][7] His research provides training for postgraduate students, consistent with his view that African specialists are needed for research and curation of their own country's plant resources.[8]

Demissew has authored and co-authored books and articles in peer reviewed journals[5] on the vegetation and plants of Ethiopia and Africa.[4][9] He is a member of national and international professional organizations and has served as Chair of the Biological Society of Ethiopia, Secretary General of the Association for the Taxonomic Study of the Flora Tropical Africa (AETFAT) in addition to being a Council member of International Association for Plant Taxonomy (IAPT).[4] He served as Co-Chair of the Multidisciplinary Expert Panel for the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES).[1][4][7]

Awards and honours

In 2016, Demissew was awarded the Kew International Medal.[2][3]

He was elected a Foreign Member of the Royal Society (ForMemRS) in 2018 for “outstanding contributions to research and innovation”.[4][10]

In 2021 Demissew was awarded the Cuatrecasas Medal for Excellence in Tropical Botany by the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History, USA , for his life's work in conserving and recording the very diverse Ethiopian flora with many endemic species, and leadership of the Ethiopian Flora Project and the National Herbarium.[11] This award is made annually to a scientist who has made a very significant contribution to advancing the field of tropical botany.

References

  1. 1 2 3 4 5 "Sebsebe Demissew : CV" (PDF). ipbes.net. Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services. Archived from the original (PDF) on 2018-05-16. Retrieved 2018-05-15.
  2. 1 2 Anon (2016). "Kew International Medal is Awarded to Professor Sebsebe Demissew". Taxon. 65 (6): 1467. doi:10.12705/656.39. ISSN 0040-0262.
  3. 1 2 Anon (2016). "Ethiopia's Prof. Sebsebe Demissew awarded prestigious Kew International Medal". kew.org. Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew. Retrieved 2018-05-15.
  4. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 Anon (2018). "Professor Sebsebe Demissew ForMemRS". royalsociety.org. London: Royal Society. Retrieved 2018-05-15. One or more of the preceding sentences incorporates text from the royalsociety.org website where:
    “All text published under the heading 'Biography' on Fellow profile pages is available under Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.” --Royal Society Terms, conditions and policies at the Wayback Machine (archived 2016-11-11)
  5. 1 2 Sebsebe Demissew publications indexed by the Scopus bibliographic database. (subscription required)
  6. ↑ Demissew, Sebsebe (1985). The genus Maytenus (Celastraceae) in NE tropical Africa and tropical Arabia. urn.kb.se (PhD thesis). Uppsala University. ISBN 91-554-1726-4. ISSN 0082-0644. OCLC 12561331.
  7. 1 2 Díaz, Sandra; Demissew, Sebsebe; Carabias, Julia; Joly, Carlos; Lonsdale, Mark; Ash, Neville; Larigauderie, Anne; Adhikari, Jay Ram; Arico, Salvatore (2015). "The IPBES Conceptual Framework — connecting nature and people". Current Opinion in Environmental Sustainability. 14: 1–16. doi:10.1016/j.cosust.2014.11.002. hdl:11336/56765. ISSN 1877-3435.
  8. ↑ "The man opening Ethiopia's first botanic garden". BBC News. Retrieved 7 July 2020.
  9. ↑ Díaz, Sandra; Demissew, Sebsebe; Joly, Carlos; Lonsdale, W. Mark; Larigauderie, Anne (2015). "A Rosetta Stone for Nature's Benefits to People". PLOS Biology. 13 (1): e1002040. doi:10.1371/journal.pbio.1002040. ISSN 1545-7885. PMC 4293102. PMID 25585296. Open access icon
  10. ↑ "Prof. Sebsebe becomes first African Foreign Member of the Royal Society". Embassy of Ethiopia, London. 20 July 2018. Retrieved 8 March 2019.
  11. ↑ "Ethiopian Prof. Designated as 2021 Recipient of José Cuatrecasas Medal for Excellence in Tropical Botany". Ethiopia Observer. 10 May 2021. Retrieved 3 July 2021.

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