Dr. Gerald Blasch is an experienced Crop Disease Geo-Spatial Data Scientist at the International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center (CIMMYT), specialized in satellite earth observation, UAV, and GIS applications. He focuses on crop disease early warning systems, land use / land cover mapping, crop type mapping, yield estimation, and climate change. Gerald is passionate about R4D of remote sensing and GIS solutions using advanced data analytics for crop disease surveillance and forecasting, agricultural monitoring, and climate change risk assessments in East Africa, South Asia, and beyond. For instance, he assessed the potential of UAV and very high-resolution satellite sensors
for wheat disease severity detection and phenotyping. He plays an important role in developing earth observation products for integration into wheat disease early warning and advisory systems.

Gerald has 15+ years of experience working in academia and organizations such as Newcastle University, GIZ, and GFZ Potsdam, excelling in multidisciplinary, (inter)national research projects.