Professor Maggie Gill, OBE, FRSE is an emeritus Professor in the School of Biology, University of Aberdeen. From 2014 to 2019 Maggie was Chair of the Independent Science and Partnership Council of the CGIAR (a consortium of international agricultural research centres). She currently chairs an EU Think Tank for the project Fit4Food 2030 and the Science Advisory Panel of the New Zealand Government’s Our Land and Water National Challenge. She is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh, the Royal Society of Biology and the Royal Scottish Geographical Society. Maggie was Chief Scientific Advisor for the Environment and Rural Affairs in the Scottish Government from 2006 to 2011, after serving as CEO and Research Director of the Macaulay Institute (one of the predecessors of the James Hutton Institute). She went to the Macaulay after four years as CEO of Natural Resources International Ltd, a company owned by four universities which was spun out of the privatisation of the Natural Resources Institute (originally part of the UK Government Overseas Development Administration). Maggie (an agricultural science graduate of Edinburgh University), has been a researcher (initially in animal nutrition), managed research programmes and advised governments on research, broadening her expertise to the interactions between food systems, society and the environment. She is passionate about bringing the policy and science communities closer together to help accelerate the use of knowledge in helping to deliver the Sustainable Development Goals.

Professor O’Mara is an agricultural scientist and sustainable livestock systems specialist, with over 30 years’ experience in technical and senior managerial capacities in Agri-Food research, education and development institutions. Frank has wide ranging experience of the Agri-Food Industry. Having completed his undergrad degree in UCD, he worked in the feed industry, prior to taking up a PhD position in dairy cow nutrition. He was then awarded a Newman Scholarship to develop a new energy and protein rationing system for the Irish Feed Industry. Following this he obtained a lecturing and research position in UCD, where his work included development of the Irish Greenhouse Gas inventory for the Agriculture sector and completed the first work measuring methane emissions from cattle in Ireland. Frank then left UCD to take up a role in Teagasc, and becoming the Director of Research in 2009 Frank has also made a huge contribution to scientific communication and representing Ireland on numerous international committees and working groups. He is the current president of the Animal Task Force and former president of the ASA. Frank hails from a farming background in Tipperary and continues his interest in farming today.

Dr Katie McDermott is a Lecturer in Sustainable Livestock Production at the University of Leeds. Katie works closely with the CIEL National Pig Centre collaborating with academic and industry partners on projects spanning the production cycle as well as the environmental impact of pig production. She is currently working on a variety of research projects across a wide range of topics including adaptive farrowing, waste valorisation, risks of resource reuse and the development of a dynamic, scalable hind-gut in vitro model, RoboHog. Katie is broadly interested in sustainable ways of improving animal health, efficiency and performance whilst minimising environmental impact. She has a specific interest in determining how early life experiences can affect the lifetime health, welfare and performance of an individual animal. For her PhD, Katie examined the role of the rumen bacterial population in efficient fibre digestion in cattle and she remains passionate about improving the efficiency and therefore sustainability of production systems through manipulation of the microbiota.