Women Leaders in Science - Inga Jacobs-Mata

Inga Jacobs-Mata is the Director of Water, Growth and Inclusion at the International Water Management Institute (IWMI), based in Pretoria, South Africa, also she is the Regional Representative for the IWMI Southern Africa regional office. She is a political scientist and holds a PhD in International Relations from St-Andrews University, Scotland, as well as a Master’s degree in International Relations and Political Science from Stellenbosch University, South Africa.
Jacbos-Mata specializes in environmental and water governance. Her areas of expertise include climate information service delivery; the politics of climate change; operationalizing the water-energy-food nexus and its governance frameworks; water stewardship; community-based approaches/supported self-supply; hybrid water law; and environmental migration.
Before joining IWMI, Inga was the research group leader of the integrated water solutions group at the Council for Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR), and prior to that, the Executive Manager for Business Development, Marketing and Communications at the Water Research Commission (WRC) in South Africa.
Since her association with IWMI in 2019 as the Country Representative for South Africa and Regional Representative for Southern Africa, Jacobs-Mata has effectively steered IWMI’s initiatives in the region, including the CGIAR’s Ukama Ustawi Regional Integrated Initiative for East and Southern Africa, the World Bank funded Accelerating Impacts of CGIAR Climate Research in Africa (AICCRA) Zambia project, and IWMI’s contributions to the USAID-funded Accelerated Innovation Delivery Initiative (AID-I). In her capacity as CGIAR Country Convenor for South Africa, she has made significant contributions to the field. Recently appointed as the IWMI/CGIAR Water Systems Director for Growth and Inclusion from June 1, 2023, she continues her impactful work in East and Southern Africa and globally.
Jacobs-Mata will have a conversation with Nayeli Hernandez Espinosa who is a research assistant in the Wheat Quality and Chemist Laboratory at CIMMYT headquarters. Hernandez Espinoza has written and contributed to several published scientific research articles related to wheat quality. She is currently focused on the research of arabinoxylans (AX), together with her team they have developed a faster, cheaper and more reliable method for its quantification, and most recently she has been exploring the concentration of AX in durum and bread wheats, and how the AX is influenced by the environment and harvest year.