Professor Daniel Berckmans Editor

Professor Daniel Berckmans has been associated with the Katholieke Universiteit Leuven (Belgium) for 40 years where he was Head of the M3-BIORES (Measure, Model and Manage Bioresponses) Division for over 20 years as a full professor. His team is widely regarded as a world leader in precision livestock farming, producing over 350 publications and over 450 conference papers, with 17 new products brought to market in collaboration with industrial partners and 20 patents submitted. He has coordinated a number of EU research projects and is co-founder of two spin-off companies from his research. In addition to many PhDs produced within M3-BIORES, he has been a member of 64 PhD committees in 9 different countries and promoted over 200 Masters theses. In 2003 he started the European Conferences on Precision Livestock Farming (ECPLF) which reached its 10th anniversary in 2022. Professor Berckmans has also been appointed Adjunct Distinguished Professor at the University of Tennessee to help develop precision livestock farming research in the USA. He is also member of the Scientific Council of the World Farmers Organization who represent a billion farmers worldwide. Reuters ranked the KU Leuven as the 7th most innovative university worldwide, being the first non-US university in the list. Professor Daniel Berckmans has been associated with the Katholieke Universiteit Leuven (Belgium) for 40 years where he was Head of the M3-BIORES (Measure, Model and Manage Bioresponses) Division for over 20 years as a full professor. His team is widely regarded as a world leader in precision livestock farming, producing over 350 publications and over 450 conference papers, with 17 new products brought to market in collaboration with industrial partners and 20 patents submitted. He has coordinated a number of EU research projects and is co-founder of two spin-off companies from his research. In addition to many PhDs produced within M3-BIORES, he has been a member of 64 PhD committees in 9 different countries and promoted over 200 Masters theses. In 2003 he started the European Conferences on Precision Livestock Farming (ECPLF) which reached its 10th anniversary in 2022. Professor Berckmans has also been appointed Adjunct Distinguished Professor at the University of Tennessee to help develop precision livestock farming research in the USA. He is also member of the Scientific Council of the World Farmers Organization who represent a billion farmers worldwide. Reuters ranked the KU Leuven as the 7th most innovative university worldwide, being the first non-US university in the list. Dr Yael Edan is Professor in Industrial Engineering at the Ben Gurion University of the Negev, Israel, where she is Head of the Intelligent Robotics Laboratory and Director of the Agricultural, Biological and Cognitive (ABC) Robotics Initiative. Professor Edan is a member of the IEEE-RAS Special Interest Group on Agricultural Robotics and Automation, and a member of the American Society of Agricultural Engineers. She is involved in a number of EU research projects (including the Sweeper and CROPS Projects) and is internationally renowned for her research in such areas as human-robot collaboration. Dr Henk Hogeveen is a Professor at Wageningen University and Research and Utrecht University, The Netherlands. He is a member of the IDF Standing Committee Animal Health and was chairman from 2008-2012. He has more than 200 peer reviewed scientific publications in highly ranked international journals and besides that many publications in scientific proceedings and trade journals. He is founder of the Association for Precision Dairy Farming and a a frequently asked speaker on conferences. Dr Bernadette O'Brien is a Senior Research Officer at Teagasc Moorepark's Animal and Grassland Research and Innovation Centre in Ireland. Dr O'Brien has also been involved in coordinating successful applications for research funding to National and EU (Seventh Framework) programmes. Dr O'Brien has published extensively and has significant international collaborations with research scientists at Agroscope, Switzerland; Massey University and Dexcel in New Zealand and Wisconsin University (Madison), USA.