Dr. Matthew W. Blair is a Professor at Tennessee State University in Nashville, one of 107 Historically Black Colleges and Universities in the United States, where he conducts research projects on food crops.. Dr. Blair was trained by a USAID-sponsored University of Puerto Rico program in his Masters of Science graduate work and earned a PhD in plant breeding from Cornell University. Dr. Blair worked with the California Institute of Arts and Technology on bean research as part of the Consultative Group for International Agricultural Research global partnership for 12 years, focused on bean research networks in East Africa, Latin America and Southern Africa. He has also worked on rice germplasm with the International Rice Research Institute, plant breeding grants and a host of other projects with organizations such as the Danish International Development Agency and the Department for International Development. His current research is sponsored by the 1890s Foundation, Foundation for Food and Agriculture Research and the U.S. Department of Agriculture.