“No more key lime pie please” is the coffee talk held by Tim Schilling, revolving around Lexicon and the WCR Sensory Project, for which La Marzocco was a supporter, contributing in the training practice and with the GS3 machine.

Timothy Schilling is the Executive Director of World Coffee Research (WCR), a collaborative research and development program of the global coffee industry to grow, improve, and protect supplies of quality coffee to fuel the growth of the dynamic coffee industry that directly affects the livelihoods of over 100 million people globally. WCR is funded and driven by the global coffee industry, guided by producers, executed by renowned scientists and managed by the Norman Borlaug Institute. World Coffee Research serves as the impetus and mechanism by which the supplies of Arabica coffees and the quality of those supplies will be increased through partnerships among origin countries, the coffee industry, producers, and national and international research and extension organizations.

Dr. Schilling is an agronomist, manager and researcher with strong market orientation and experience in agribusiness and cooperative development. His leadership as the Director of the USAID PEARL and SPREAD projects was crucial to the very successful entry of Rwanda into the American and European Specialty Coffee markets. This new multi-million dollar sector has doubled incomes for over 100,000 small coffee producers and has assisted the Government change the image of Rwanda in the international press. Dr. Schilling has led several other major international initiatives including the SPARC project in Mali where Schilling set up the Malian Agricultural Research Planning and Funding system at Mali’s Institute of Agricultural Research, IER. The system assisted researchers focus on results that directly affect farmer production and increased revenues through linkages with markets and industry. As Associate Director of the Collaborative Research Support Program for Sorghum and Millet, Dr. Schilling worked with Universities, the U.S. Congress, USAID, and National Agricultural Institutes in African and Latin America to set up research programs in 6 different countries to increase sorghum and millet food supplies. In Cameroon as the National Peanut Research Program leader, Dr. Schilling developed and released three high yielding, short season peanut varieties that use an escape mechanism to resist the devastating Sahelian droughts.