1. Prof. J. Adinarayana – Former President, APFITA and Institute Chair Professor of Centre of Studies in Resources Engineering (CSRE), IIT Bombay, India.
Prof. J. Adinarayana holds Ph.D. and is working as Teaching/Research Faculty Member from 1986 and currently Institute Chair Professor of Centre of Studies in Resources Engineering (CSRE), IIT Bombay, India. His areas of expertise include agro-informatics in contemporary agriculture. As a Team Leader, he led various interdisciplinary national and international R&D projects on digital agriculture. He is the Immediate Past President of Asia-Pacific Federation for Information Technology in Agriculture (APFITA) Board and the Current President of INSAIT. He served as an Editorial Board Member of ‘Regional Geoderma’ (Elsevier) & CIGR journals. Currently, he is a Member, CIGR Board on Technical Section VII (IT Systems); Vice-Chair of Agriculture and Open & Sharing Data Working Groups of the Asia-Pacific Advanced Network (APAN), Expert Committee Member in various national organizations, including ICAR, ISRO, MoA&FW and DST. He is Recipient of JSPS Invitation Fellowship, DST Young Scientist Project, INSA Visiting Scientist/Faculty awards, Visiting and Adjunct Faculty/Scientist at Univ. of Tokyo (2013), Univ. of Bonn (2007), Univ. of Aston/UK (1991); Edith Cowan Univ./Perth (2010-17). He guided about 12 Ph.D.s and more than 30 M.Techs and presented research results in more than 100 research papers/book chapters in International Journals/publishers.
2. Prof. Tien Yin Chou, President of Taiwan Association of Agriculture, APFITA General Secretary, Director of GIS research Center, Feng Chia University.
Currently, Dr. Jimmy Chou is the Dean, of the College of Construction and Development, Feng Chia University. In addition, he is a Director of GIS research Center for over 30 years. Dr. Jimmy Chou is a leader of thousands of projects in GIS, Remote sensing applications. Professor Jimmy Chou is in charge of many important positions such as Chair, Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC) Asia Forum; Secretary-General, Asia-Pacific Federation for Information Technology in Agriculture (APFITA).
3. Dr. Rabi Narayan Sahoo – Agricultural Institutes (ICAR-IARI) Indian Agricultural Research Institute, India.
Dr. Rabi Narayan Sahoo is a Principal Scientist working in the Division of Agricultural Physics, ICAR-IARI, New Delhi. Dr Sahoo works on applications of remote sensing and GIS in agriculture mainly hyperspectral remote sensing (ground, aerial and satellite platform) of soil and crop health for Precision Agriculture, high throughput sensor-based Plant Phenomics, radiative transfer modelling and land use cover change. Dr Sahoo is leading a National Network program on Imaging Spectroscopy and Applications. Dr. Sahoo has authored more than 230 publications having 115 peer reviewed journal papers.
4. Prof. Seishi Ninomiya – International Field Phenomics Research Laboratory, The University of Tokyo, Japan.
Prof. Seishi Ninomiya was one of the pioneers who introduced computer science to agricultural sciences and has conducted several researches in agriculture using data mining, machine learning, pattern recognition etc. Now, he is co-leading a Japan-Indo/JST-DST research project, “Data Science-based Farming Support System for Sustainable Crop Production under Climatic Change”, collaborating with IITB, IITH, PJTSAU and IIITH. He is the former president of Asian Federation of Information Technology in Agriculture.
5. Prof. Teruaki Nanseki – President of Japanese Society of Agricultural Informatics, Kyushu University, Japan.
His research works cover not only theory, methods, and information system development in the major fields, but also their applications and practices in the real world. His first research topic focuses on the management of risk, information, and human resources of farms. The second topic examines the development and growth of both farms and agriculture. The third topic emphasizes on agricultural innovation, smart farming, and digital agriculture. These research topics are closely connected. He has been the president of the Japanese Society of Agricultural Informatics since 2019. Moreover, he was the president of the Japanese Society of Farm Management from 2014 to 2016.
6. Assoc. Prof. Dongpo Li – School of Economics and Trade, Hunan University of Technology and Business, China.
Assoc. Prof. Dongpo Li started to be a professional researcher with the Institute of rural economics, Hebei Academy of Social Sciences, China, since 2004. He was awarded a Ph.D. in Agricultural Resource Economics, from Kyushu University, Japan. He served as an academic researcher with the Faculty of Agricultural, Kyushu University, Japan, from June 2014 to March 2019. Thereafter, Dr. Li is serving as an associate professor and graduate supervisor in School of Economics and Trade, Hunan University of Technology and Business, China. In March 2020, he was selected into the 12th supporting program of “100 Talents Plan” of Hunan Province, China. He is also a director of Chinese Society of Foreign Agricultural Economy (CSFAE), expert in the national graduate education evaluation and testing expert database. Assoc. Prof. Li’s main research interests include smart agriculture, rural and digital economy, and blockchain technology. As the first author, he has published more than 30 academic papers in Chinese, English and Japanese, published one English academic book as the co-editor, participated in writing 9 academic books, and presented research findings 27 times on academic conferences at home and abroad.
7. Prof. Fernando Bienvenido – Department of Computer Science, University of Almería, Spain.
Prof. Fernando Bienvenido is working in Department of Computer Science , Universidad de Almería, Spain. Prof. Fernando Bienvenido is expert on information systems (business informatics), data structures, algorithms, energy economics, supply chain management and manufacturing. Prof. Fernando Bienvenido and his team have published at least 76 articles related to his fields.
8. Prof. Leisa Armstrong – Leader of Digital Agriculture Research Group, Edith Cowan University, Australia
Leisa is a Senior Lecturer in Computer Science within the School of Science. Leisa leads the eAgriculture Research Group and is also a member of Centre for Environmental Management and Centre for Innovative Practice at ECU. She has multidisciplinary expertise in Computer science, Agriculture and Environmental Science. Leisa is Course coordinator of Master of Computer Science (145) and Master of Information Technology (146) courses and a University Contact Officer (UCO) in the Office of Pro-Vice Chancellor (Equity and Indigenous). Leisa has worked as an academic in Computer Science discipline at Edith Cowan University since 2002. Before joining ECU, she worked for several years as an agricultural research scientist on various industry related projects and as a software engineer. Leisa has also worked as an academic at various universities including University of Queensland, Curtin and Murdoch Universities with honorary positions at University of Mumbai universities in both computing, agricultural and biological sciences disciplines. Leisa brings a multidisciplinary approach to her research. Her research expertise is computer science techniques, decision support systems, UAV/drone and sensor networks, virtual reality education tools as well as crop physiology/agronomy and agricultural systems. Leisa is an internationally recognised researcher in Digital Agriculture. She leads several international research collaborations in Asia which focus on technology solutions for sustainable agricultural systems. Leisa is a past President of Asian Pacific Federation of Information Technologies in Agriculture (APFITA) and has been awarded by International Commission of Agricultural and Biosystems Engineering (CIGR) High Merit Award for services to Information Technology in Agriculture. Building on her background and expertise, she is currently researching digital agriculture, artificial intelligence and machine learning techniques for agriculture and health care applications, emerging technologies and ICT adoption.
9. Prof. Masayuki Hirafuji – Graduate School of Agricultural and Life Sciences, The University of Tokyo, Japan
Dr. Hirafuji Joined the University of Tokyo as a project professor in 2017. Before that, he was a director at NARO. He is the inventor of Field Server, which is a kind of IoT in fields. He is investigating CPS with Metaverse in JST AIP Acceleration Research as PI.
10. Assoc. Prof. Sindhuja Sankaran – Department of Biological Systems Engineering, Washington State University, USA
A researcher in agricultural automation engineering, Sankaran’s work focuses on advanced sensor technologies that detect and measure phenotypes—the physical expression of genes—in crops, supporting plant breeding, crop plant research, and precision agriculture. She utilizes opto-electronic, biological, and chemical sensors for non-invasive, rapid and continuous monitoring of plant responses to environmental stress, helping create a faster and better understanding of how our food crops react to a changing environment. Over the past six years, she has developed new tools to evaluate traits including crop vigor, stress tolerance, and seed size and quality across multiple crop breeding programs. She has published over 100+ peer-reviewed journal articles, proceeding papers, and book chapters, and have given 100+ talks in US and around the globe including countries such as Australia, Brazil, Canada, Colombia, India, Mexico, etc. She is a member of the American Society of Agricultural and Biological Engineers, the National Association of Plant Breeders, the North American Plant Phenotyping Network, and the International Society of Precision Agriculture.
11. Assoc. Prof. Soumik Sarkar – Mechanical Engineering, Iowa State University, USA
Dr. Soumik Sarkar is an Associate Professor of Mechanical Engineering and Computer Science, a Walter W Wilson Faculty Fellow in Engineering and the Director of the Translational AI Center at Iowa State. He also serves as the Associate Director of the USDA-NIFA sponsored AI Institute for Resilient Agriculture (AIIRA). Dr. Sarkar’s research interests include Machine Learning and Decision & Control with applications to Cyber-Physical Systems such as energy, transportation, design & manufacturing and agriculture systems. He co‐authored more than 200 peer-reviewed publications. Dr. Sarkar is a recipient of the prestigious Young Investigator award from the US Air Force Office of Scientific Research (AFOSR) in 2017 and the NSF CAREER award in 2019.