Rainer W. Bussmann

In 2017 he left the Missouri Botanical Garden to co-found a new Department of Ethnobotany at the Institute of Botany and Bakuriani Alpine Botanical Garden (BABG) at Ilia State University, Georgia (Caucasus).

He has been involved in the development of professional societies in the field of ethnobotany and ethnobiology as president and member of the council of the Society for Economic Botany (2008-2020), International Society for Ethnopharmacology (2010-2014), Society of Ethnobiology (2008-2011), Botanical Society of America (2008-2011), International Society of Ethnobiology (2008-2010), and holds memberships in the Association for the Taxonomic Study of the Flora of Africa, Bayerische Botanische Gesellschaft, East Africa Natural History Society, International Society of Ethnobiology, International Society for Ethnopharmacology, Society for Economic Botany, and Society of Ethnobiology. In addition to his academic work, Bussmann has co-founded several international non-governmental organizations in the areas of Biodiversity Conservation and Traditional Knowledge, including Nature and Culture International, Saving Knowledge and Etnomont. He featured in the German television documentary Secret world of herbs.

In 2007 he was appointed director of the William L. Brown Center, and William L. Brown Curator of Economic Botany at the Missouri Botanical Garden. Over the next decade, Bussmann transformed the center into an international research unit with projects on five continents, ranging from traditional ethnobotany and ethnopharmacology, to regeneration ecology, the impact of climate change, Intellectual Property Rights, and the application of the "Nagoya Protocol on Access to Genetic Resources and Fair and Equitable Sharing in Benefits Arising from its Use".

From 2003 to 2006 he joined the University of Hawaii (Manoa) as Scientific Director of the Harold L. Lyon Arboretum, and as Associate Professor of Botany, focusing his research on the ecology of cloud forests and medicinal plants in northern Peru, under the Program of International Health Research Training and Health of Minorities (MHIRT) of the National Institute of Health. During 2006-2007 he joined the Department of Geography at the University of Texas (Austin) as a visiting professor.

From 1994 to 2002 Bussmann worked as Post Doc at the University of Bayreuth developing ecological research in the mountain forests of Kenya and Ethiopia, and as scientific coordinator of the DFG (German Science Foundation) program, "Functionality in a Tropical Mountain Rainforest: Diversity, Dynamic Processes and Utility Potentials under Ecosystem Perspectives featured in the German television documentary series "Humboldts Erben". During that same time he led investigations of vegetation in the forests of East Africa, including the establishment of the Maseno University Botanical Garden. Bussmann was also one of the founding participants of the Global Mountain Biodiversity Assessment (GMBA).

Rainer W. Bussmann (Leutkirch, 30 May 1967) is a German botanist and vegetation ecologist, specializing in ethnobotany and ethnobiology, wild food plants, wild crop relatives, climate change, gastronomic botany and preservation of traditional knowledge in the Andes, the Caucasus and the Himalayas. He has worked at the University of Bayreuth, University of Hawaii, University of Texas, the Missouri Botanical Garden, Ilia State University and the State Museum of Natural History Karlsruhe; he has founded several international non-governmental organizations, including Nature and Culture International, Saving Knowledge, and Ethnomont.