Piccinni Named Director of the Texas Water Resources Institute

Giovanni Piccinni, Ph.D., Society member (ASA, CSSA, and SSSA), and former ASA board member (2020–2023), has been named director of the Texas Water Resources Institute (TWRI). The institute is part of Texas A&M AgriLife, and Piccinni also serves as a professor in the Department of Soil and Crop Sciences at Texas A&M University. 

He previously served as the Global Lead for field and plant production optimization and sustainability at Bayer Crop Science in St. Louis. After taking the helm at TWRI, Piccinni is working to empower interdisciplinary teams of researchers through the institute, which has helped Texans solve critically important water problems for more than 70 years.

Serving in leadership roles at Monsanto and Bayer from 2008–2024, his work included developing strategies to improve production with input efficiency, especially in water resources. From 2014–2018, Piccinni served as global production sustainability lead for the supply chain side of Monsanto’s global operations, developing environmentally minded strategies and leading teams around the world. Beginning in 2018, he took on a larger role, leading global field and plant production optimization and sustainability for Bayer Crop Science, formerly Monsanto. 

From 1995 to 2008, he worked within Texas A&M AgriLife Research as a postdoctoral assistant research scientist, assistant professor, and associate professor at laboratory and field research locations in Amarillo and Uvalde. During this time, Piccinni led research programs in plant stress and disease stress physiology that advanced irrigation and yield optimization technologies in drought environments. 

Piccinni holds an agronomy and crop physiology doctorate from the University of Bari, Italy, and he completed executive training at the University of Chicago Booth School of Business and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology Sloan School of Management.