Lutz Merbold joined the International Livestock Research Institute (ILRI) as a senior scientist in May 2016. He will lead research activities in the Mazingira Centre and further promote the environmental assessment capacities of the laboratory. Merbold is a biogeochemist with specialization in ecology, ecophysiology and micrometeorology and has worked as a senior scientist and lecturer of environmental sciences at ETH Zurich (Swiss Federal Institute of Technology), Switzerland. He was the Swiss coordinator for Integrated Carbon Observation System (ICOS) a pan-European environmental research infrastructure and is is the Swiss principal investigator of an international research project focusing on the mitigation of nitrous oxide emissions from pastures globally.