Professor Marcelis is Head of the Horticulture and Product Physiology Group at Wageningen University, The Netherlands. The Group is widely regarded as one of the world’s leading university centres of expertise on greenhouse cultivation and vertical farming. Professor Marcelis is an internationally-recognised authority on the use of light in greenhouse and other protected systems to optimise crop production.Dr Heuvelink is Associate Professor in the Horticulture and Product Physiology Group at Wageningen University and is well known for his work on crop physiology and modelling. Both have published widely on greenhouse cultivation. Beatrix Waechter Alsanius is an internationally leading researcher on sustainable food production in horticultural cropping systems, emphasizing on the use of microorganisms for environmentally-sound cropping systems, threats of human and plant pathogens in horticultural production chains and food safety of vegetables and fruit. Since 2009 her current position is chair professor in horticulture at the Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences (SLU), Alnarp, Sweden. During 2010 to 2013 she acted also as an adjunct professor in phytology at Université Laval, Québec, Canada and headed from 2009-2014 the international postgraduate school "Microbial Horticulture (µHORT)", funded by the Swedish research council Formas. Dr Toyoki Kozai is the former President of Chiba University, Japan, where he is now an Emeritus Professor. Professor Kozai is also the Honorary President of the Japan Plant Factory Association (JPFA) and a former President of The Agricultural Academy of Japan. As a pioneer of indoor plant factories with artificial lighting (PFALs), also referred to as indoor vertical farming, Professor Kozai is widely regarded as one of the founding figures in PFALs, and vertical farming. He has edited a number of books on PFALs and is the author of over 300 publications on controlled environment agriculture technologies.Dr Eri Hayashi is the President of the JPFA, where she is also the Director of International Relations and Consulting. Eri was Research Project Leader for a national project on Artificial Intelligence- and Phenotyping-based Smart Plant Factories with Artificial Lighting (PFALs). She leads a number of international projects on technology development, has given presentations at a number of international conferences, and has written widely on the topic of smart plant factories. She was a co-convener of the Symposium of Advances in Vertical Farming at the 31st International Horticultural Congress (IHC 2022). She led the JPFA in organizing the first JPFA International Symposium on Plant Factory (ISPF 2023) at Kashiwanoha, Japan.Stefania De Pascale is Professor of Horticulture at the University of Naples Federico II. She is Chair of the ISHS Division Protected Cultivation and Soilless Culture and is on the editorial boards of a number of journals. Professor De Pascale is a leading authority on nutrient and water management of horticultural and ornamental crops.Youssef Rouphael is an Associate Professor at the University of Naples Federico II, Italy. He is Editor-in-Chief of Agronomy MDPI and has been a guest editor on biostimulants in several International Journals (Scientia Horticulturae, Frontiers in Plant Science and Agronomy MDPI). He is a member of the scientific committee of Biostimulant.com. He is internationally-known for his research in horticultural science.Dr Eldert van Henten is Professor of Biosystems Engineering in the Agricultural and Biosystems Engineering Group at Wageningen University and Research, The Netherlands. From 2011 and 2023 he served as co-chair of the IEEE-RAS special interest group on Agricultural Robotics and Automation. In that period he was also co-Chair of the Technical Commission on Agricultural Robotics at euRobotics. He is a member of the CIGR International Commission of Agricultural and Biosystems Engineering.Dr Oliver Körner is a Senior Scientist and Head of the Department of Next-Generation Horticultural Systems (HORTSYS) at the world-renowned Leibniz Institute of Vegetable and Ornamental Crops (IGZ), Germany. He leads the HORTSYS 2 Research Group and is Acting Head of the PA HORTSYS Research Group. Dr Körner is internationally known for his expertise in the controlled environment cultivation of horticultural crops, particularly modelling plant-environment interactions in protected cultivation.Dr Nazim S. Gruda is Professor of Horticulture at the University of Bonn, Germany. Professor Gruda is internationally-renowned for his research and over 250 publications in areas such as soilless culture, controlled environment cultivation and product quality of horticultural crops. He is Chair of an International Society for Horticultural Science (ISHS) Working Group and has edited Acta Horticulturae for the ISHS. In recognition of his research, Professor Gruda was awarded the 2003 “Dr. Heinrich-Baur-Prize” by the Technical University of Munich, Germany, the 2017 “National Scientific Prize” by the Albanian Academy of Science, and the status of “Distinguished Scientist” by the Chinese Academy of Science in 2020.
