Dr. Ratih Damayanti

Dr. Ratih Damayanti – Indonesia

Ratih is the Director of Environment, Maritime, Natural Resources, and Nuclear Policy at the National Research and Innovation Agency (BRIN), Indonesia. Previously (2023-2025), she was the Director of Scientific Collection Management at BRIN, who responsible to manage national scientific depository including herbarium, animal, seed bank, xylarium, archaeological, geodiversity, microorganisms, and botanical gardens.

Ratih was Research Professor at Ministry of Environment and Forestry, before it was then integrated into BRIN. The anatomy and quality of lignocellulose materials, forensic of lignocellulose, and Non-Destructive Testing (NDT) are her scientific interests. Dr. Ratih and her team developed Automatic Wood Identification Tool (AIKO-KLHK), which contains 1,719 wood species and has been installed by more than 6 thousand users. With AIKO-KLHK, Dr. Ratih received several awards, including The 1st Winner of the JAAI Innovation Award (JSPS Alumni Association of Indonesia) in 2022, 113 Indonesia Innovations from Business Innovation Center in 2021, and being selected as One of the six female inventors, and published in TEMPO Magazine in a special report entitled “The ‘Eureka’ Moment of Female Inventors” (2019). Dr. Ratih is also a keynote speaker at various national and international seminars and provides supervision to undergraduate, master, and doctoral students.

Dr. Ratih is the curator of Bogoriense Xylarium, which during her leadership was declared as the largest wood collection in the world. Because of her achievements, Dr. Ratih was awarded the HIMPENINDO AWARD: Outstanding Young Researchers in Life Sciences (2021) and Top Ten Most Inspiring Civil Servants (2019) from Ministry of State Apparatus Empowerment and Bureaucratic Reform, Indonesia. Upon joining BRIN on September 26, 2023, Dr. Ratih established Xylarium Indonesia in BRIN which is focused on preserving protected wood collections and non-timber forest products.

Ratih was born in 1980 in Jember, Indonesia. She got her Ph.D. in Wood Science from the University of Melbourne, Australia, and Bachelor’s and Master’s Degrees from IPB University. More than 130 national and international publications and 20 Patents and Copyrights have been produced during her career from 2007 to the present. She is a member of IAWA Council (2021-2023) based in Leiden, Netherlands.