Dr. Spiro Stefanou is the Acting Deputy Under Secretary for the Research, Education, and Economics mission area, comprised of more than 8,500 employees across five organizations including the Agricultural Research Service, Economic Research Service, National Agricultural Statistics Service, National Institute of Food and Agriculture, and the Office of the Chief Scientist. Together, these organizations advance agricultural research, innovation, data, and Extension addressing agriculture’s highest priorities across the entire U.S. food supply chain.
Since 2020, Dr. Stefanou has served as the Administrator of USDA’s Economic Research Service, providing leadership for this Federal statistical agency’s research, analytical, and technical operations. He oversees professional staff that focus on relevant and timely research and analyses on the economics of agriculture, food, the environment, and rural America.
Prior to that, he was a Professor of Economics in the Food and Resource Economics Department at the University of Florida and a Professor of Agricultural Economics at Penn State University.
He is a Distinguished Fellow of the Agricultural and Applied Economics Association and was a Marie Curie Senior Fellow at the University of Crete (Rethymnon, Greece), Mansholt Senior Fellow at Wageningen University (Netherlands), and Jean Monnet Fellow at the European University Institute (Florence, Italy). He has been a visiting professor at the Institute for Advanced Studies (Vienna, Austria), and the Mediterranean Agronomic Institute (at Chania). Dr. Stefanou has served on the editorial boards of six national and international journals.
Dr. Stefanou received his Ph.D. in Agricultural Economics from the University of California, Davis, his M.S. in Agricultural and Resource Economics from the University of Maryland and a Bachelor of Arts in Anthropology from George Washington University.