The winner in the “people in science” category for WSC2019 is Didier Roguet.
Ethnobotanist, with specialization in medicinal and toxic plants, he has published extensively on the issue of plants and their historical and geographical relationships with humans. Specifically in the Alps, in Paraguay, where he has been working for twenty years on an integrated technical cooperation program related to the use of medicinal plants, and more recently in Africa, where he is focusing on useful palm trees and their fibers, in particular rattans, raffia, and doum palms.
He is a curator at the Botanical Garden of Geneva (CJBG, Conservatoire et Jardin botaniques de la ville de Genève ), where he is responsible for exhibitions, events, cooperation in the South and public relations. He is also responsible for many temporary exhibitions and for the permanent interactive exhibitions of the Ethnobotanical Gardens and Garden of Scents and Touch.
He also wrote numerous publications concerning environmental education applied to botanical gardens. He is editor of the Feuille vert, the public periodical of CJBG, as well as many documentaries and educational series of this institution. He is responsible for the technical cooperation programs of the CJBG in the South (Paraguay, Brazil, Bolivia, Senegal, Côte d’Ivoire), where he collaborated in the creation and development of several environmental education centers and ethnobotanical gardens.
Didier won in the “people in science” category with an image of his colleague Fred Stauffer, analyzing an inflorescence of a palm tree in Senegal. The image was quickly used for his Wikidata item, and stresses the importance of international cooperation and preservation of biodiversity. The photo depicts the activity of the project Hyphaene, one of the research activities undertaken by the Botanical Garden of Geneva towards the study of African palms.
Image winner: CC BY-SA 4.0 Didier Roguet 2019 Wikimedia Commons