Position Title
Executive Director
Dario Cantù is a professor and plant biologist in the Department of Viticulture and Enology at UC Davis. He earned his BSc/MSc in Agricultural Sciences and Technologies from the University of Milan and completed his PhD in Plant Biology at UC Davis in 2009. Cantù joined the V&E department in 2012, where he teaches courses such VEN002, VEN118, and VEN210. From 2017 to 2024, he was Chair of the Viticulture and Enology Graduate Group, guiding over 120 MSc students to graduation. He held the Louis P. Martini Endowment from 2017 to 2024 and is currently the Ray Rossi Endowed Chair. In 2018, Cantù was named a Chancellor's Fellow for excellence in teaching, research, and service.
Since 2019, he has also been the Executive Director of the UC Davis Chile Life Sciences Innovation Center, an international center of excellence fostering collaborative research between UC Davis and academic, public, and private partners in Chile. His research focuses on the genetic mechanisms of key agronomic traits in grapes, including disease resistance, flower development, and susceptibility to smoke taint, as well as grape domestication and plant-microbe interactions. He has published over 100 peer-reviewed articles in these fields.