Te’o Lau Dr. Viliamu Iese (Vili) is the Academic Lead and Chair for the Drought and Innovation Hub Research Advisory Committee, and a Senior Research Fellow for droughts and climate studies at the School of Agriculture, Food and Ecosystem Sciences, The University of Melbourne.
He has conducted research and published widely in the fields of drought and climate risk management in agriculture, indigenous peoples food systems, food security, diets and health, climate-change loss and damage, and evaluation of climate-change adaptations in Pacific SIDS.
Vili is a member of the FAO’s Global Hub on Indigenous Peoples’ Food Systems; a member of the Asia-Pacific Scientific and Technical Advisory Group (AP-STAG) to the United Nation Office for Disaster Risk Reduction, a member of the Research Board of the World Meteorological Organisation.
Vili is a member of the IUCN Pacific’s Steering Committee on Nature Based Solution. Vili is a Lead Author for the IPCC WG2 in the AR7 and recently appointed to the High-Level Panel of Experts in Food Security and Nutrition’s Drafting Team for the global report “Preserving, strengthening and promoting Indigenous Peoples’ food and knowledge systems and traditional practices for sustainable food systems”.
He is a Samoan matai and a Tuvaluan by citizenship.
