Ola Westengen is a Professor at Noragric. He does research on food and seed systems, agrobiodiversity; conservation and use of genetic resources; food security and adaptation to climate change; crop evolution and crop diversity as biocultural heritage.
Westengen leads the NMBU Seed System Lab with projects ACCESS and BOLD (links under the Research and project tab below) and co-leads the NMBU Sustainability Arena on Sustainable Food Systems. He is currently the Research Coordinator at the department.
Westengen teaches in EDS306 Foundations of Sustainability Science, EDS352 Agroecology and Development, and several other courses at NMBU. Previous to joining Noragric, Westengen worked in the Food and Agriculture Organization of the UN (FAO) and served as the first Coordinator of Operations and Management of the Svalbard Global Seed Vault from 2008-2015.
Other roles: Member of the Norwegian Food System white paper commitee and the Danish consultative research committee for development research