Francisco J. Matus

Professor Matus is an agronomist. He completed his master's degree at P. Universidad Católica, Chile. He was awarded from Chilean Government to fulfill his Ph.D. at the Agricultural University of Wageningen, The Netherlands (1995). Both programs were carried out in plant nutrition, soil fertility, and environmental sciences. His main research interests are nutrient dynamics, soil conservation, carbon sequestration, and soil development in extreme environments. Professor Matus has experience in stable isotopes and pedogenic factors that determine soil properties. He is currently the Director of the Laboratory for the Conservation and Dynamics of Volcanic Soils at the University of La Frontera. He was the former Director of the Department of Plant Production at the University of Talca and the former Director of the Ph.D. Program in Natural Resource Sciences at the University of La Frontera, accredited by the European Union. He belongs to the International Union of Soil Science and the Chilean Soil Sciences Society. He has several international and national collaborations and an extensive network of contacts with research groups in Chile, France, Canada, Belgium, Holland, New Zealand, and Australia. In 2009, Professor Matus was invited and awarded as a Postdoctoral Fellow by the Carleton University Department of Chemistry and the Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada to join a Canadian government project to improve the efficiency of nitrogen use in agriculture for which several patents were obtained. He currently works in collaboration with the German Project “EarthShare Shipping Surface by Biota,” funded by DFG. He has been invited to various national and international conferences. He owns several publications in high-impact journals, books and books chapters.