Imagining the sustainable supply chains of the future: an interview with Dr Christine Roussat

Can we imagine future sustainable supply chains and food systems? Today we talk with Dr Christine Roussat, a visiting researcher with the University of Nottingham Business School. Christine is an Associate Professor in the IUT at the Université Clermont-Auvergne in France. They are interested in the use of fictions in shaping the world of tomorrow, …

Swift: A ten minute coffee with Dr Michael Pound

Michael Pound was recently promoted to Associate Professor in the School of Computer Science. Mike was a Nottingham Research Fellow with the Future Food Beacon before becoming an Assistant Prof. Tell us about your research in 10 words or less… I use machine learning to quickly analyse biological images. Now, explain your research for a …

Swift: A ten minute coffee with Dr Gabriel Castrillo

Dr Gabriel Castrillo is an Associate Professor in Plant Microbiomes and a member of the Future Food Beacon, where he started out as a Nottingham Research Fellow.  Tell us about your research in 10 words or less… I examine plants interactions with microbes in the area of nutrition. Now, explain your research for a lay …

Swift: A ten minute coffee with Prof Malcolm Bennett

Malcolm Bennett is a Professor of Plant Science and a member of the Future Food Beacon leadership team. He was recently recognised as one of the most Highly Cited Researchers 2021 by Clarivate Analytics (based on data from Web of Science).  Tell us about your research in 10 words or less… Futureproofing crops by discovering …

Swift: A ten minute coffee with Prof Levi Yant

Levi Yant has recently been promoted to Professor in the School of Life Sciences. He is a Future Food Beacon group leader. Before this he was a Project Leader at the John Innes Centre (Norwich, UK). His independent research career began in 2014 as a Project Leader at Harvard University (USA), where he had previously …

Fieldwork in the Yucatan during the Covid-19 pandemic – An interview with Karla G. Hernandez-Aguilar

Karla G. Hernandez-Aguilar is a PhD candidate on the Palaeobenchmarking Resilient Agricultural Systems (PalaeoRAS) project. Photograph above: colour diversity in a maize variety called Gallito (little rooster) harvested in the same milpa plot in Xoy community in Southern Yucatan – by Karla G. Hernandez-Aguilar When was your first research trip to the Yucatan and how did it go? My first …

Plant root breakthrough leads to Science paper – Bipin Pandey and Rahul Bhosale tell us how it happened!

Dr. Bipin Kumar Pandey (above) is a Research Fellow in the School of Biosciences at the University of Nottingham. He received a 12-month PhD+ award from the Future Food Beacon in April 2018. Dr. Rahul Bhosale is a Nottingham Research Fellow in Phenomics and Functional Genomics at the Future Food Beacon, University of Nottingham. He …

From China to the UK during the pandemic – An interview with Dr Yiqun Gao

Dr Yiqun Gao is based at the Shanghai Institutes for Biological Sciences. He is a Newton International Fellow at The Future Food Beacon and we are grateful to him for travelling to the UK to take up his Fellowship on 1st November 2020, right in the middle of the UK’s ongoing Covid-19 pandemic! His brave decision …

Improving Brassica rapa for better nutrition – An interview with Dr Guillermina Mendiondo

Dr Guillermina Mendiondo is an Assistant Professor in Translational Crop Science at The University of Nottingham. She works on different plant species as part of her work on crop molecular genetics within the Future Food Beacon. The origins of the project In 2018, Dr Mendiondo travelled to South Africa and visited farmers in KwaZulu-Natal as …

How can the winged bean improve our futures? An interview with Chong Yuet Tian

Tian is a Future Food Beacon Malaysia PhD student under the supervision of Prof. Festo Massawe, Dr. Hui Hui Chai and Dr. Ajit Singh. She obtained a BSc (Hons) in Agricultural Science before joining University of Nottingham Malaysia to research genetic improvement of crop plants, especially minor and underutilised crops. She is currently researching winged …