Lance O'Brien

Lance O'Brien, BA, MA, PhD, MBA, Head of Strategy and International Relations, TEAGASC. 

Lance O'Brien joined Teagasc (The Irish Agriculture and Food Development Authority) from the Irish Ministry of Finance in 1980, having previously worked as a researcher in the Irish Economic and Social Research Institute (ESRI).

Since joining Teagasc, he has worked in the areas of corporate and strategic planning, programme and project planning, foresight development and research management. He is a member of the Teagasc Senior Management Team with specific responsibility for foresight and strategy development and working with the management team to drive innovation in Teagasc and to support Teagasc's mission of driving innovation in the agri-food sector and wider bioeconomy, as well as managing Teagasc's Postgraduate Fellowship Programme (The Walsh Fellowships Programme).

He has contributed to national research policy initiatives in Ireland and to a number of Irish agricultural and food policy developments, including the two recent industry-led strategies  - Food Harvest 2020 (2010) and Food Wise 2025 (2015). He led the two major Foresight projects undertaken by Teagasc, namely Teagasc 2030 (2008) and Teagasc Technology Foresight 2035 (2016). He was also a member of the Third EU SCAR Foresight Expert Group, whose report-Sustainable Food Consumption and Production in a Resource-Constrained World, was published in 2011. He was a member of an International Expert Panel which developed a long-term science agenda for agriculture in Africa-Connecting Science-A Science Agenda for Transforming Agriculture in Africa (2014).