Colombia

Jörg Stamm

Jörg Stamm was born in 1963 in Olpe, Germany. After having finished school and social service, Jörg began his apprenticeship as a cabinetmaker. In the same time he learned to speak Spanish and from this he discovered his aim:  to work in development aid in South America. As a joiner he was very fascinated of stairs, houses, boats and bridges for years and so he worked in several wooden construction firms, too. His first project in development aid was a biogas facility in a village in Ecuador.

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Upon arriving in Colombia, he learned about bamboo and began to really appreciate it. He already used it as boardings for concrete buildings - a true alternative to cutting down precious tropic trees in the rain forest. After this first contact with this underestimated material, he recognized its immense potential.

Today he lives in Popayan, Colombia with his wife, and managing his own construction company. He is a global consultant, influential teacher, and respected colleague.

Vietnam

My Hanh Diep

Vietnamese scientist Diep Thi My Hanh makes a fundamental contribution to the global bamboo movement by studying the characteristics and the practical values of different species. Dr. Hanh grew up in Phu An, a village 40 kilometers north of Saigon.

When she returned after the war with a doctor’s degree in Environmental Science and Technology from France, not much was left of her hometown. The land was destroyed, the people were poor and farmers didn’t know how to sustainable use the available resources.
The Bamboo Village has become the region’s beating heart of bamboo research. It is part of the University of Natural Sciences of Ho Chi Minh City, and attracts many local and foreign students. 

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Together with her team, she develops training programs for the local community. When she won the UNDP Equator prize in 2010, the organization estimated that already 3,000 families in Phu An had economically benefited from her activities. 

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France

Yves Crouzet

Yves Crouzet founded the European Bamboo Society in 1986, while working as CEO of La Bambouseraie de Prafrance, an enormous botanical garden located in the south of France. During his tenure, he significantly expanded the bamboo collection in these magnificent gardens. He and his team hosted the 2nd International Bamboo Conference in 1988 (2nd WBC), which united bamboo people from around the world. In 1990, he moved his interest to Portugal, where he developed the nursery Bambuparque, selling hundreds of thousands of bamboo plants for the landscape trade as well as plantation development. 

Vietnam

James Wolf

James got his innitial hands-on experiences renovating old houses and working on a construction crew as a teenager. At 22 he moved to Tokyo, Japan and apprenticed to a Japanese woodworker, the late Miki Kota. In 1995 he went to the 4th World Bamboo Congress in Bali and got hooked! His success is gained through his attention to details and the skills he has learned working with bamboo for over 26 years .

Mexico

Peter Van Lengen

Has spent the last 16 years breaking new ground in bio-architecture, both in the development of alternative building technologies and a pioneer in eco-sanitation. As director of TIBÁrchitects, Van Lengen and his team of architects and agroecologists, has designed and built socio-environmental
projects within communities, indigenous lands, ecovillages, inner city areas and historical centers, concentrating on natural resource restoration and the construction of fully sustainable buildings.

He is the editor of the Barefoot Architect Handbook and in 2010 was the winner of the Planeta Casa Award for his social action in São Paulo, Brazil. In 2018 he was made Bamboo Ambassador for Brazil by the World Bamboo Organization and has participated in over 40 bamboo workshops worldwide.

His most distinguished building is the Imagina Cultural and Ecological Center of nearly 3,600 m 2 , famous for being all made with adobe and bamboo. It opened in 2016 to the joy of thousands of children and adolescents in the city of Leon, Mexico. Currently his team is building 140 homes out of natural
materials for the Awá communities living in the Amazon forest.

Mexico

Martin Mortera

Architect, designer and social activist , his university education was carried out between Mexico, Colombia and Cuba. His work has focused on the construction of bamboo, adobe and sustainable architecture since the last 12 years, as well as the consulting of these materials to private companies, NGOs and government.

He has represented Mexico as a speaker in different countries such as Colombia, Brazil, Peru, the United States, South Korea, India, Chile and Cuba. Executive Director and CEO of Bamboo Architecture Mexico, a construction company with Bamboo, with works in Mexico, Peru and India, some of its clients are the Four Seasons Group, Conrad by Hilton, Hilton Group, Garza Blanca Group and KAN Tulum, as well as construction projects for private companies and with some Mexican government agencies.

Indonesia

Marc Peeters

Founder of the company Bambu Nusa Verde (BNV) ,a biotechnology company specialized in the micropropagation of bamboo species. Their head office and production facilities are located in Yogyakarta, Indonesia. 

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BNV is technically supported by Oprins in Belgium, and their production system applies the tissue culture protocols developed by Oprins for numerous tropical bamboo species. 

Through our highly competent and dedicated staff, they strive to maintain the highest technical standards to ensure the production of high quality true-to-type bamboo clones. 

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At BNV they maintain a limited stock of selected species of elite bamboo planting material and can produce a wide variety of species on special order. 

India

Dr. Nirmala Chongtham

Dr. Nirmala Chongtham, a World Bamboo Ambassador, is a leading authority on the food value and health benefits of bamboo. She works as a Professor in the Department of Botany, Panjab University, Chandigarh, India. Her love for bamboo started from her homeland Manipur, a land of abundant bamboo resources. Nirmala was key to the successful scientific program of the 10th World Bamboo Congress Korea in 2015 and 11th WBC in Mexico 2018 serving as Chair and Co-Chair of the Technical Committee. Her Keynote lecture “The Healing touch of Bamboo” in the recently concluded WBC was highly appreciated.

She is a recipient of various grants from National and International funding bodies including the Ned Jaquith Foundation and American Bamboo Society (USA) to aid her ongoing research. She is also working on a book titled “Bamboo Shoot as a Health Food” dealing with the nutritional properties and health benefits which will be released shortly.

USA

Lynn Clark

Clark is one of the world's leading authorities on bamboo, naming 110 species of the plant since she began her research more than 40 years ago. In fact, Clark and her colleagues identify bamboo species new to science during every field trip they make. Their work enables an understanding of bamboo diversity for conservation and restoration efforts but also provides the foundation for identifying relevant traits that could be used for selection of bamboo varieties, ultimately for bamboo improvement programs.

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In addition to her bamboo research, Clark teaches plant biology and graduate courses at Iowa State and also directs the Ada Hayden Herbarium, a collection of about 640,000 specimens of dried plants and fungi. It's no wonder Clark has immersed herself in the world of plants -- she says she's been interested in biodiversity and evolution ever since she was a teenager. "I became interested in plants while in high school," Clark said. "Bamboo captured my imagination right from the beginning and so I have dedicated most of my career to studying bamboo diversity and evolution."

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It's groundbreaking research like Clark's that makes Iowa State one of the top research universities in the country. 

France

Jean-Luc Kouyoumji

Dr. Jean-Luc Kouyoumji is an expert in bamboo use for building and engineered bamboo products.

He holds a PhD in “Civil engineering and Building Sciences” of Savoie University. Since 1997 he has been working in the French Technological Institute for Wood (FCBA). Project manager or coordinator of R&D projects, and was involved in Bamboo EU projects: Bamboo For Europe and Bamboo Thematic Network. Co-Author of the “Cross Laminated Timber Handbook” for Canada and for USA, and for the “Technical Guide for Tall Wood Buildings in Canada”.