We are delighted to welcome our keynote speakers to share their knowledge and expertise.

This page will update continuously.

Prof. Riccardo Bommarco

Professor in agricultural entomology ,
Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences

Cropping system redesign for reliable crop protection

Cropping systems redesign, or ecological modernization, is needed to successfully protect our crops given fewer or no chemical pesticides and a dearth of effective substitutions. This requires a systems approach to strengthen multiple ecosystem functions that support crop production and are provided biodiversity (including the weeds) and to adapt to climate change.

www.slu.se/en/research/research-catalogue/grupper/b/bommarco-lab/

Prof. Spyros Fountas

Professor in Agricultural Engineering,
Agricultural University of Athens

Spyros Fountas is Professor in Agricultural Engineering at the Agricultural University of Athens. He has been Editor-in-Chief in the Elsevier journal Smart Agricultural Technology (2021-today), while he was Editor-in-Chief in the Elsevier journal of Computers and Electronics in Agriculture (2014-2021). He holds a BSc in Agricultural Sciences from Greece in 1993, an MSc from Cranfield University, at Silsoe College UK in Management Information Systems in 1998, and PhD from Copenhagen University, Denmark in Systems Analysis on Precision Agriculture in 2004. He was also Visiting Scholar at Purdue University, USA in 2002. He has been Keynote speaker in several conferences among others in the FIRA Conference on Agricultural Robotics in France 2021; International Horticultural Congress in Turkey in 2018, 17th European Weed Research Society (EWRS), in France in June 2015; European Conference on Precision Agriculture (ECPA) in Spain in 2013. He has coordinated 7 H2020 and Horizon Europe projects, Smart-AKIS, GATES, OPTIMA, BEATLES, ICAERUS, Oper-8, SmartDroplets, while he has participated in several other European, national and industry-based projects. He has more than 250 papers, including book chapters, journal papers and conference papers and 15,000 citations (Google scholar, October 2026).

Dr. Steven Mirsky

Director of Digital Agriculture,
USDA Agricultural Research Service (ARS)

Dr. Steven Mirsky is the Director of Digital Agriculture for the USDA Agricultural Research Service (ARS), where he leads national efforts to advance digital agriculture from discovery through deployment. He co-founded the Digital Agricultural Systems Hub (DASH), which develops end-to-end computer vision solutions for weed detection and management, built as open-source public infrastructure. This includes the National Plant Agricultural Image Repository (AgIR), of the world’s largest repositories of corp and weed imagery, provides the training data for open-source AI models that identify crop and weeds. For deployment, he developed ModCam, an open, low-cost camera platform, which enables field-scale weed mapping on equipment farmers already own. Dr. Mirsky also leads implementation of the USDA National Proving Grounds Network for AgTech, which is scaling independent, national testing of AgTech for weed detection and control. Lastly, he co-leads GROW (Getting Rid of Weeds), a national integrated weed management network (growiwm.org). Across these efforts, he brings together government, academia, industry, and growers to translate research into rugged, field-ready technologies that improve the productivity, resilience, and profitability of U.S. agriculture.