Dr. Iona Yuelu Huang is a Senior Lecturer in the Department of Food, Land & Agribusiness Management at Harper Adams University. Her research interests are in the governance of agri-food supply chains, agribusiness decision-making, the economic impact of agri-tech, and food loss and waste management. She has led or participated in research projects that apply the principles of the circular economy to the agri-food sector. More recently she has conducted projects on topics such as a review of a sustainable farming incentive pilot, farm business resilience, landscape recovery pilot, plasticulture, and technologies in protected environment agriculture. Her current work focuses on applying a True Cost Accounting approach to assessing the sustainable value of farming practices and surplus food redistribution. She is a member of the Global Institute of Agri-tech Economics, and the Centre for Evidence-Based Agriculture (CEBA).
Laura Vickers is an Associate Head of the Department for the Sustainable Systems Section and Senior Lecturer in Plant Biology at Harper Adams University. She previously held a NERC Knowledge Exchange Fellowship in the area of Horticulture. She gained her Ph.D. in 2012 from the University of Birmingham before working as a postdoc at Harper Adams University in Shropshire, within the Fresh Produce Research Centre. She teaches crop production, plant physiology, and biosciences to undergraduates, and entomology, horticulture, and plant physiology to postgraduates. She is the course manager for the Agricultural Sciences and Production Systems MSc and the BASIS partnership manager. Her research areas of expertise are in organismal adaptability to environmental stress, in particular water stress, working with Professor Peter Kettlewell in the area of antitranspirants. She also conducts research in entomology, particularly aphids, and urban farming. She is an advisory board member of the UK Urban AgriTech, as well as working within the Policy and Advocacy group. Her other interests are in fresh produce production, and postharvest quality, in addition to plants as green infrastructure.
Luis Manuel Navas-Gracia is a Full Professor at the University of Valladolid, Spain. He received a degree in Agricultural Engineering from the Polytechnic University of Madrid in 1991, and a PhD in Energy and Machinery from the Polytechnic University of Madrid in 1996. He worked as a Professor at the Polytechnic University of Madrid until 2002. He currently also works as a visiting professor at the Federal University of Viçosa, Brazil. His research interests include biosystems and bioprocess engineering, environment, renewable energy, energy efficiency, process automation, precision farming, greenhouse technology, waste reutilization, and urban farming.
