Michele Stanca who has been researcher since 1972 obtained his degree in Agricultural Science at the University of Bari. As a visiting scientist he spent one year at the Plant Breeding Institute (PBI) in Cambridge (UK) and attended a summer school at the Trinity College of Dublin.

He is breeder of many successful barley varieties concentrating on High Yield Potential and Stability of Yield at high level. His variety ARDA became very popular and considered a milestone of the model barley for highly fertile as well as Mediterranean environments.

As Director of the Genomic Research Center of Fiorenzuola d’Arda (PC), Italy – the Italian Agricultural Research Council - till the first of June 2009, he organized the setting up of new buildings and very well equipped laboratories, mainly devoted to genetics, molecular biology, biodiversity analysis, conventional and molecular breeding, malting quality, crop physiology, food science and technology, molecular traceability, bioinformatics.

In the last few years he promoted and realized platforms for phenotyping and genotyping crop species and their corresponding wild relatives. In such activities he coordinated a Group of 65 people with international experience. By using barley as model plant, fundamental and applied research methods were developed with the final aim to understand the gene structure and function.

As member of the international Panel Reviewers of the Research Projects on Plant Biology, Genetics and Breeding he has coordinated several scientific projects and he is now coordinating the Project “MAPPA 5A” to build up the Physical Map of the 5A Wheat Chromosome within  the International Wheat Sequencing Consortium.

He has been chairman of the Cereal Section of EUCARPIA and is now country representative.