Mario Herrero is a professor in the Cornell CALS Department of Global Development, the director of Food Systems & Global Change, a Cornell Atkinson Scholar, and the Nancy and Peter Meinig Family Investigator in the Life Sciences. His research focuses on increasing the sustainability of food systems for the benefit of humans and ecosystems. He works in the areas of food systems and the environment, climate mitigation and adaptation, livestock systems, true cost of food, sustainability metrics, and healthy and sustainable diets. In 2024, Herrero was elected to the National Academy of Sciences, is a highly-cited researcher according to the Web of Science, and is in the top 10 of Reuters list of most influential climate change scientists.

Herrero has played senior roles in many global initiatives on food and the environment. Currently, he is a Co-Chair of the Food Systems Countdown Initiative, Coordinating Lead Author of the IPBES Nexus Assessment, a Commissioner and Executive Committee member of the EAT-Lancet 2.0 study, serves on the Expert Panel on Livestock Methane, is a member of the steering group for the global True Cost of Food Coalition, and he serves on the executive committee of the Global Burden of Animal Diseases program.

Before joining Cornell, he was Chief Scientist of Sustainability, at Australia’s National Science Agency, the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organization (CSIRO). He also spent 13 years at the International Livestock Research Institute in different leadership roles. Herrero was part of the Scientific Group leading Action Track 2 - Shifts to Sustainable Food Consumption of the UN Food Systems Summit, he was a co-chair of the Cornell – Nature Sustainability expert panel for Nature Sustainability, he has held senior leadership positions on the IPCC Special Report on climate change, food security and land (lead author), the IPCC 5th and 6th Assessment Reports (lead and contributor author) in the area of agricultural greenhouse gas mitigation, a commissioner in the EAT-Lancet Commission on Sustainable Diets, The Lancet Commission on Obesity, and a member of the US National Academy of Sciences high level panel on the Future of Agriculture and Food. Additionally, he has contributed to the World and Human Development Reports and numerous integrative science initiatives globally. All of these are major endeavors (100-1000 international scientists) that shape the research and funding agendas on agriculture and food, society and the environment.