Dr. Stefano Poni is full professor of viticulture and past chair of the department of sustainable crop production at the Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore in Piacenza, Italy. He is the director of the International Master VENIT (Viticulture and Enology: Innovation meets Tradition). Stefano has authored or co-authored 257 papers, 136 of which have been published in international peer-reviewed journals and 43 edited in international refereed proceedings.

Stefano has been an invited speaker at 37 conferences worldwide. He has been awarded the ""Perdisa"" prize in 1994, the “Enotecnici” prize in 2004, and the Rudolph Hermanns Foundation Prize in 2011. He won the “2013 Best Paper Award” from the American Society of Enology and Viticulture. Stefano is a peer reviewer for 21 scientific journals and has been associate editor for the American Journal of Enology and Viticulture since 2006 and associate editor for the Australian Journal of Grape and Wine Research since 2014. He was a member of the national evaluation panel for assessment of the quality of research in Italy from 2011-2014.