Chedly Abdelly
Directeur Général/ Managing Director

Professor Chedly ABDELLY obtained his Doctorate of State in Natural Sciences from the Faculty of Sciences of Tunis (1997). He coordinated several national and international research projects. He is internationally recognized as an accomplished ecologist and eminent halophyte specialist. He serves as CEO of the Tunisian National Agency for the Promotion of Scientific Research since 2017, CEO of the Centre of Biotechnology of Borj Cedria, CBBC (2011–2017), Director of the laboratory of Extremophile Plants (2010–2018) and the Laboratory of Plant Adaptation for Abiotic Stresses (2002–2010).

Professor Chedly ABDELLY has actively and remarkably contributed to the field of Biological Sciences, with particular emphasis on the characterization of the plant responses to abiotic constraints using physiological, biochemical and molecular parameters, addressing plant behaviour to combined environmental constraints, the valorization of extremophile plants in the rehabilitation of marginal areas and the characterization of extremophile plants in order to identify promising species which combine stress tolerance and economic potential, new sources of biomass for human nutrition and the production of energy biomaterials and biomolecules of interest.

He has an outstanding proven track record of publications in distinguished journals (more than 450 publications, h index 74, citations number: 22,929, World ranking: 260; National ranking: 01) and edited the book ‘Biosaline Agriculture and High Salinity Tolerance’. Besides 03 patent inventions, he supervised more than 80 PhD thesis and 37 Master students. He obtained several prestigious prizes:

• The Presidential Prize of the Graduation Diploma from the Higher School of Teaching (1980)
• The Presidential Award for the Best Researcher in Biotechnology (2016)
• The National Order of Merit for Science and Education (2017)
• The Presidential Award for the best Laboratory (2018)
• Continental Prize for scientific excellence ‘Kwame Nkrumah’ (2020)
• Finally, he was elected as full member of the Tunisian Academy of Sciences, Letters and Arts (2019) and Fellow African Academy of Sciences ‘FAAS’ (2019)