Martin van Ittersum obtained his PhD in Agricultural and Environmental Sciences from Wageningen University. He is now a professor of Plant Production Systems at the same institution. His research and teaching focus on sustainable agriculture and the global food challenge. He specialises in analysing, designing and evaluating agricultural systems at field, farm, regional and global levels. He has led numerous national and international projects addressing the global food issue, the integrated assessment of agricultural systems, yield gap analysis, phosphate depletion, climate change, and the circularity of food systems. Since 2011, he has led the Global Yield Gap Atlas project, which maps the potential for increasing food production on existing agricultural land. He co-chaired the 1st (2013) and 4th (2020) editions of the International Congress on Global Food Security and will chair the 5^(th) edition in Leuven in 2024. From 2015 to 2016, he was the interim chair of the Biological Business Systems Group at Wageningen University. He has been one of the most cited agricultural scientists in the world since 2015. From 2022 onwards, he will hold a visiting professorship at the Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences in Uppsala for two months each year.