Our team of seven Co-Investigators bring their expertise from across the UK, working with the Executive Team to steer the work of the Network and oversee funding awards.
Professor of Food Biotechnology at the University of Reading
Dimitris is Professor of Food Biotechnology at the University of Reading. He specialises in food loss and waste, and publishes in food bioprocessing, waste valorisation and functional foods.
Dimitris has won over £3M from BBSRC, GCRF, Innovate UK, EIT Food and industry. He was Director of the BBSRC Network FoodWasteNet (2014-19) and is a Co-Director of the BBSRC Biomass Biorefinery Network (BBNet, 2019-25).
Professor of Food & Society at the University of Newcastle
Professor of Food & Society at the University of Newcastle, Lynn is an internationally recognised specialist in assessing stakeholder and consumer responses to innovations in agriculture, food and the environment.
She’s been Principal Investigator or Co-Investigator of more than 60 relevant projects (>£20m, >300 publications) funded by UKRI, the EU, UK and Dutch government departments, and industry. Lynn has also served on many working groups, including the Nuffield Council of Bioethics, the UN, FAO, WHO and the FSA Social Science Advisory Committee.
Elizabeth Creak Chair in Rural Policy and Strategy at the Royal Agricultural University
Tom MacMillan is Elizabeth Creak Chair in Rural Policy and Strategy at the Royal Agricultural University. He is a founding Director of the Centre for Effective Innovation in Agriculture, expert advisor to the Food, Farming & Countryside Commission and worked with Henry Dimbleby on the National Food Strategy.
He was Director of the Food Ethics Council (2003-11) and Innovation Director at the Soil Association (2011-2019), where he set up the Innovative Farmers network.
Professor of Agri-Food Technology at University of Lincoln
Simon is Professor of Agri-Food Technology at University of Lincoln. He’s Principle Investigator (PI) of EPSRC’s Internet of Food Things Network+, PI of UKRI-Lincoln Agri Robotics centre, was Co-Chair (with then Secretary of State George Eustice) of Defra’s Review of Automation and Robotics for Horticulture.
Simon has significant industry experience across the agrifood system, including eight years with Marks and Spencer, and seven as CEO of a UK farming company, and has held UKRI grants (£36M) across EPSRC, BBSRC, Research England, NERC, STFC and IUK
Director of the Institute for Global Food Security at Queen’s University Belfast
A specialist in livestock systems, Nigel is Director of the Institute for Global Food Security at Queen’s University Belfast.
He led the livestock work in Modelling European Agriculture with Climate Change for Food Security under the Joint Partnership Initiative on Agriculture Food Security and Climate Change, bringing together research in grasslands, livestock, crops and agricultural trade to illustrate how climate change will affect Europe’s agrifood systems.
Professor of Soils & Global Change at the University of Aberdeen
Pete is Professor of Soils & Global Change at the University of Aberdeen, and a specialist on agriculture and greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. He has been a Highly Cited Researcher each year since 2014, with over 570 papers.
Pete has led the IPCC’s work on agricultural GHG mitigation since 2007. He’s also led numerous projects for UKRI and the EU (>£13m since 2012) and is Science Director of the Scottish Climate Change Centre of Expertise.
Professor of Agricultural Systems at Scotland’s Rural College (SRUC)
Professor of Agricultural Systems at Scotland’s Rural College (SRUC), Christine specialises in soil and nutrient management across a range of land uses and scales. She is Associate Dean of SRUC’s Northern Faculty and holds the Royal Swedish Academy of Agriculture and Forestry Professorship at the Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences.
Christine was President of the European Society for Agronomy (2014-16).
