Fábio M. DaMatta is an agronomist and received his D.Sc. degree in 1995 in plant physiology from the Federal University of Viçosa, Brazil, where he is currently a Full Professor of Plant Physiology at the Plant Biology Department. Dr. DaMatta is the author or co-author of more than 200 research articles and book chapters, most of which deal with the ecophysiology of the coffee tree. Over his career, he advised 42 postgraduate students and supervised 11 postdocs. He served as a consulting member of the Brazilian Consortium for Coffee Research and Development (1998-2010), as Editor-in-Chief of the Brazilian Journal of Plant Physiology (2006-2008), and as the coordinator of the leading Latin American Graduate Program in Plant Physiology (Federal University of Viçosa; 2008-2023).

Dr. DaMatta serves on multiple research networks and holds associate editor positions at prominent plant physiology and agriculture journals. His current H-index is 55 (Scopus). Over the last three years, Prof. DaMatta features in the list of world's most influential scientists, as compiled by Stanford University and published by Elsevier. Ricardo get his PH. D. in Biology at University of Navarra (Spain) in 2001 working on cold stress in maize.

Later he spent three years as a postdoc in University of California San Diego studying root water uptake properties in maize plants under abiotic stress conditions. Lately, he came back to Spain at Zaidin Experimental Station (CSIC) and started working on mycorrhizal symbiosis and drought and salt stress. Most recently he started working on plant growth-promoting rhizobacteria. He has been published more than 120 research papers and is an editor of several research journals devoted to plant science and microbiology.