Nienke Beintema is head of the Agricultural Science & Technology Indicators (ASTI) initiative. The ASTI initiatve involves collaborative alliances with a large number of national and regional R&D agencies as well as international institutions. The ASTI initiative compiles, processes, and makes available internationally comparable data on institutional developments and investments in agricultural R&D worldwide, and analyzes and reports on these trends in the form of occasional policy digests for research policy formulation and priority setting purposes. (More information can be found on the ASTI website: www.asti.cgiar.org).

Before joining IFPRI in 1995 as a research analyst, Nienke worked at ISNAR in The Hague. She is a citizen of the Netherlands and received a master's degree in economics from the University of Groningen.