Gerald Blasch is a Crop Disease Geo-Spatial Data Scientist whose work focuses on research for development (R4D) of remote sensing and geospatial solutions for crop disease early warning systems. He holds a PhD in Agricultural Remote Sensing from Technical University Berlin, Germany, and an MSc in Physical Geography from University Regensburg, Germany.
Blasch has 13 years of research and consultancy experience on both international and national projects in the agriculture and development sectors of several countries (e.g. Australia, China, Germany, Mexico, and the UK). As researcher, he developed remote sensing and GIS tools for precision and conservation agriculture, digital soil mapping, and environmental monitoring during his Post-Doc (Newcastle University, UK) and PhD studies (GFZ Potsdam, Germany), and consultancy activities (CIMMYT, Mexico). As a GIS expert (GIZ, Germany; SEMARNAT, Mexico) he built and managed a GIS for waste management, including capacity building and knowledge transfer.