I am junior scientist from the Ufa Institute of Biology, department of soil science (Russia) with background in cartography and GIS. I joined ISRIC as guest researcher through a fellowship awarded by the Climate Food and Farming Network (CLIFF) and the Global Research Alliance (GRA).

My thesis was focused on digital mapping of soil degradation processes (erosion and salinization). My research interests include digital soil mapping, cartography, GIS and soil ecology.

My scientific theme is “Improved soil carbon mapping in sub-Saharan Africa to support soil fertility and climate mitigation studies” supervised by Gerard Heuvelink.

Ashenafi Ali is a PhD candidate at the Department of Geography and Environmental Studies of Addis Ababa University, Ethiopia, who joined ISRIC as guest researcher through a fellowship awarded by the CLIFF-GRADS scholarship. He is working as an interface of GIZ - Alliance Bioversity International and CIAT - Ministry of Agriculture - Coalition of the Willing, on various soil information related projects. His professional carrier evolved as soil surveyor and soil legacy data officer. Currently, he is particularly focused on soil legacy data harmonization and development of operational multilayer soil property maps for improved land, soil and crop management in Ethiopia. His work at ISRIC is supervised by Johan Leenaars and Gerard Heuvelink.

Angela is a Professor of Soil Science in the College of Agriculture and Bioresources at the University of Saskatchewan, Canada. During her guest research, Angela worked on the development of a gridded soil map for Saskatchewan, including identification and evaluation of the optimum Digital Soil Mapping technique(s) for the low-relief Canadian prairies. She was also interested in collaborating on development of interoperable soil information systems to facilitate integration among different data repositories, nationally and internationally.

Scientific support was provided by Gerard Heuvelink, Niels Batjes, and Eloi Ribeiro.

Andrew came to ISRIC as a Postdoc Researcher from World Agroforesty Centre (ICRAF, Kenya). Andrew extended the soil spectroscopy package and assisted the ISRIC-AfSIS team in developing and documenting a Soil Spectral Reference Library as a part of the GSIF package and providing a well-organized spectral reference library for use by AfSIS for digital mapping purposes. Assistance was provided by Tom Hengl.

Alessandro came to ISRIC as a guest researcher sponsored by the CAPES Foundation, Ministry of Education of Brazil. He was a PhD student at the Federal Rural University of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil; part of his PhD research project at ISRIC was developed under the supervision of Dr. Gerard Heuvelink.

The general objective of his research was to evaluate the main sources of uncertainty in digital soil mapping. 

Ad has more than 30 years experience in soil, plant and water analysis, and assessment of reliability of laboratory data, including consultancy in laboratory methods and quality management in developing countries.

Ad joined the International Soil Museum in Utrecht in 1971. His main focus while at ISRIC was on data quality, documentation, and the development and use of collections.

Ad retired in September 2016. Since that time, as a guest researcher, he provides special support on 'soil analytical methods' to the DATA (WoSIS) project.