Heuermann Lecture to focus on food and agriculture research

Sally Rockey, executive director of the Foundation for Food and Agriculture Research, will speak at the next Heuermann Lecture April 26. Rockey will highlight new ways of thinking about public-private partnerships and how to leverage collaboration to drive innovation in food and agriculture.

The free lecture, sponsored by the University of Nebraska-Lincoln’s Institute of Agriculture and Natural Resources, will be at 4 p.m. at the Nebraska Innovation Campus Conference Center, 2021 Transformation Drive.

Rockey has devoted her career to improving people’s lives through research. Through her work with the foundation, she builds partnerships to support innovative science, addressing today’s food and agriculture challenges. The Foundation for Food and Agriculture is a nonprofit organization established by the 2014 Farm Bill.

Prior to this role, Rockey was a leader in federal research, overseeing the operations of extramural programs in agriculture and biomedicine. She spent 19 years with the U.S. Department of Agriculture, where she had a number of positions within the Cooperative State Research, Education and Extension Service including chief information officer.

Rockey received her doctorate in entomology from Ohio State University and did postgraduate work at the University of Wisconsin before joining the government.

The lecture will be in conjunction with the seventh annual Water for Food Global Conference, which will focus on the powerful impact that can be achieved through public-private partnerships in water for food research, technology and project development. The international conference is organized by the Robert B. Daugherty Water for Food Institute at the University of Nebraska.

Heuermann Lectures are free and open to the public. Lectures focus on providing and sustaining enough food, natural resources and renewable energy for the world’s people, and on securing the sustainability of rural communities where the vital work of producing food and renewable energy occurs. They are made possible by a gift from B. Keith and Norma Heuermann of Phillips, longtime university supporters with a strong commitment to Nebraska’s production agriculture, natural resources, rural areas and people.

Lectures stream live here and are archived soon afterward. They also air live on UNL campus and state cable channel 4, and are broadcast on NET2 World at a later date