Dr. David Hughes is the Dorothy Foehr Huck and J. Lloyd Huck Chair in Global Food Security at Penn State. He founded the global knowledge platform, PlantVillage after discovering the history of the U.S. Land Grants. 

As a poor kid from Dublin who was kicked out of school at age 15, David hates inequality with a ferocity often displayed by Irishmen for uneven playing fields. Motivated by what the U.S. Land Grants stand for, he gave up his career on zombie ants in rainforests to focus on food security and climate change. David held fellowships at Oxford, Harvard, and the UN. He also directed the recently cut USAID Innovation Lab on Current and Emerging Threats to Crops. He has won numerous awards for his work, including the Carbon XPRIZE and Top 50 Disruptors in America by Newsweek. 

In 2024, David founded PlantVillage+, a worker owned cooperative that scales out solutions on a global level and aimed at eradicating poverty and reversing climate change. He sees a future where public research continues with private sector out-scaling in a way that puts workers and communities front and center.