Welcome!

I am a Professor and Chair of Artificial Intelligence at Wageningen University and Research, in the Netherlands. The Artificial Intelligence (AIN) group is a newly established chairgroup within Wageningen University that aspires to advance artificial intelligence methods for addressing global challenges in a responsible way. With three faculty and more than 20 postdocs and PhDs, the Artificial Intelligence group is an emerging community of AI researchers aiming to advance methods and conduct use-inspired, applied research in close cooperation with domain experts in the environmental, social and life sciences.

On my website you may find about my research team, grants, teaching and publications.

Since late 2022, I co-founded and coordinate the AgMIP Machine Learning team AgML. More on our activities and how to join at agml.org.

News!

• Join our team and the LTER-LIFE national research infrastructure to advance AI for ecological modelling! We have a postdoc and a research engineer position open - applications via the WUR website until Nov 11!

• Hiring a PhD student on causal machine learning for for sustainable smallholder farming in Africa! Join my team at the new AI group in Wageningen - applications through Nov 4th here

Agenda

I am involved in (the organization of) the following events:

• Area chair, NeurIPS 2024 Datasets and Benchmarks track, 38th Conf. on Neural Information Processing Systems, Dec 10-16, 2024, Vancouver, CA.

• Keynote speaker on Knowledge-guided machine learning in plant phenomics, 2024 UK Plant Phenomics Town Hall and Conference, Sept. 4-5, 2024, Warwick, UK.

• Opening keynote on Agriculture in the Artificial Intelligence era, Ag2050 Future of Farming Systems Research Symposium, Jun. 4-5, 2024, CSIRO, Adelaide, Australia.

• Invited speaker Exploring new horizons in food through artificial intelligence, 9th F&A NEXT Summit, May 22-23, 2024, Wageningen, The Netherlands.

• Local organizer and primary representative, Open Modeling Foundation Members Council Meeting, May 15-16, 2024, Wageningen, The Netherlands.

• Keynote speaker on Machine Learning and EO for Agriculture, EO for agriculture under pressure, 2024 ESA-ESRIN Workshop, May 13-16, 2024, Frascati, Italy.

• Local organizer, PHENET Annual Project Meeting, April 23-25, 2024, Wageningen, The Netherlands.

• Guest lecture on Process-based models and machine learning - Friends or foes?, PERC Graduate course on Crop Modelling and Climate Change, March 10, 2024, Ede, The Netherlands.

• Main organizer, AgML 1st Workshop - AgMIP research team on Machine Learning for agricultural modelling, January 22-24, 2024, Wageningen, The Netherlands.

• Keynote speaker on AI for sustainability, National Collaboration of Academic Science Education Centres (ICAB 2024), February 29-Mar 1, 2024, Wageningen, The Netherlands.

• Invited speaker, panel on technologies for dealing with natural disasters, 12th Agrotechnology Conference, American-Hellenic Chamber of Commerce, February 23, 2024, Thessaloniki, Greece.

Recent journal articles

• Predictor importance for hydrological fluxes of global hydrological and land surface models, published in Water Resources Research

• Domain adaptation with transfer learning for pasture digital twins, published in Environmental Data Science

• ChromaX: a fast and scalable breeding program simulator, published in Bioinformatics

• Crop modeling frameworks interoperability through bidirectional source code transformation, published in Environmental Modelling & Software

• A weakly supervised framework for high-resolution crop yield forecasts, published in Environmental Research Letters

Full list of publications.

Academic Service

Academic Journal Editorial Boards

• Socio-Environmental Systems Modelling, (Board member, previously founding Managing Editor).

• Environmental Modelling and Software, (Board member, previously Editor).

Project Scientific Advisory Boards

• SUSCAP (Developing resource use efficiency for crops under future climate extremes and air quality), EU H2020 ERA-Net Cofund Action, (2019-).

• AnaEE (Analysis and Experimentation on Ecosystems), European Strategic Forum on Research Infrastructures, (2019-).

• New Zealand Bioeconomy in the Digital Age (Harnessing the power of digital technologies to enable the transformation of New Zealand Food Systems), AgResearch, New Zealand, (2020-2022).

• BEACON (Boosting Agricultural Insurance based on Earth Observation data), H2020 Research and Innovation Action, (2019-2022).

• IS-GEO Intelligent Systems for Geo-Sciences, EarthCube Research Coordination Network (NSF, USA), (2018-2022).

My website

This is my web office! I have developed this habit to totally restructure my website every couple of years, as an excuse to sharpen my web development skills. Nowadays, I am porting my website from Wordpress to Jekyll, while changing hosts, so please be patient!