Mutian Niu

Mutian Niu is an Assistant Professor of Animal Nutrition at the Institute of Agricultural Sciences, ETH Zurich, since June 2021, following prior appointments at the University of Pennsylvania and Farmer’s Business Network, Inc. His research is dedicated to advancing sustainable animal agriculture, with a focus on ruminant nutrition, mitigation of greenhouse gas emissions, nitrogen utilization efficiency, data science applications, and precision livestock farming.
At ETH Zurich, he oversees a comprehensive mentorship program, supervising postdoctoral researchers, doctoral candidates, and Master’s and Bachelor’s thesis projects in areas such as methane mitigation, nutrient efficiency, and development of technilogies to monitor and improve animal welfare.

Elli Broxham

With over two decades of varied professional experience, Elli is a British-Swiss Administrative Assistant at ETH Zurich, working in research groups within the Department of Environmental Systems Science, Institute of Agricultural Sciences. Her career spans leadership roles in diverse nonprofits, working on topics such as the conservation of genetic resources for food and agriculture, and disability support services, through to organic farmer and freelance translator.
A seasoned event organizer, she has successfully managed international conferences, workshops, and training courses.
Academically, Elli holds a Master’s in Social Sciences with a focus on Environmental Policy and International Development, alongside postgraduate qualifications in Systems Thinking and Social Research Methods. Fluent in English and proficient in German and Swiss German, she thrives in multicultural settings and enjoys bringing a global perspective to her work.
Outside work, she enjoys reading, writing, painting, and traveling. An advocate for diversity, equality, and inclusion, Elli also volunteers with initiatives supporting equity issues and inclusive housing.

Andrea Rosati

Secretary-General for both the European Federation of Animal Science (EAAP) and the World Association for Animal Production (WAAP).

Andrea holds degrees in Animal Sciences from the University of Perugia (Italy) and advanced qualifications, including an M.Sc. and Ph.D. in Animal Genetics from the University of Nebraska (USA). He began his career at the Italian Association of Animal Breeders, later becoming National Technical Manager. He also led the International Committee for Animal Recording (ICAR) for 11 years. Andrea has coordinated two EU-funded research projects and contributed to over 20 others. He co-founded four animal science journals and has lectured in over 40 countries. He is also author of numerous research articles and dissemination pieces, in addition to writing book chapters centered on animal science. His work spans animal production, genetics, and sustainability, with a strong focus on global collaboration.

Riccardo Carelli

EAAP Senior EU project manager
I have worked for public (National Research Council of Italy, European Commission, Ministry of University and Research) and private (Sapienza Innovazione, IPI) organizations. I have a long experience in managing international projects (7 EU projects, both in FP7 and Horizon 2020 coordinated), as well as in disseminating and exploiting project results. Within EAAP, I am responsible for the EU project Unit, which has been involved in 13 EU projects, mainly in charge of the project communication and dissemination activities.

Joël Bérard

Since april 2020 Dr. Joël Bérard is leading the strategic research division “Animal Production Systems and Animal Health” at Agroscope. He is also member of the Agroscope executive board.
During these first four years at the Agroscope Dr. Bérard worked for animal systems from the production of roughage to the milk and meat products, considering ecosystems services, multifunctionality, reduction of emissions and losses and including animal-health and welfare.
Before assuming this position, Dr. Bérard worked for eight years at ETH Zurich, first as senior assistant and group leader and afterward he became AgroVet-Strickhof head of research, the education and research center created by Strickhof, the Vetsuisse Faculty of the University of Zurich and ETH Zurich, being responsible for the management and coordination of research activities.
In addition to his work activities, Dr. Bérard is since September 2024 president of the European Federation of Animal Science (EAAP), since 2022 board member of the Swiss Association for Animal Sciences SVT, since 2021 board member of the Swiss Association for the Development of Forage Production ADFP.
Born in Italy in 1980, Joël Bérard is a multilingual food engineer with a degree from the Faculty of Agriculture of the University of Parma (Italy). He obtained his PhD in Science from the ETH Zurich (Switzerland) and completed a postdoctoral fellowship at the Leibniz Institute for Livestock Biology in Dummerstorf (Germany).

Clément Allain

Clément Allain is an agricultural engineer specializing in animal production science (INP – ENSAT, 2006). Since 2010, he has served as an R&D project manager and research engineer in the field of precision livestock farming. Over the years, Clément has actively contributed to several national and European projects focused on digital technologies in Livestock farming. His current research interests include precision livestock farming and digitalization, the economic and sociological impacts of new technologies on farms, as well as innovations in 3D imaging, computer vision, and artificial intelligence.

Lilong Chai

Dr. Lilong Chai is an Associate Professor & Engineering Specialist in the Department of Poultry Science in the College of Agricultural and Environmental Sciences at the University of Georgia (UGA). He is also an affiliated faculty member of the UGA Institute for Integrative Precision Agriculture. His research interests include climate-smart animal production, precision poultry farming, and animal health and welfare. Dr. Chai has published 280 scientific publications (including 90 journal articles, 140 conference papers/abstracts, and 50 extension articles), served as PI/Co-PI on 45 funded grants/contracts totaling approximately $5.5 million, and received 20 professional awards/honors. He currently serves as the Coordinator/Program Chair for the Georgia Precision Poultry Farming Conference and Georgia Layer Conference, two annual extension poultry training programs at UGA; Section Editor for Poultry Science journal and Guest Editor for Animal Welfare Collection of Scientific Reports journal; and grant proposal reviewer/panelist for USDA-NIFA, NSF, Canada Foundation for Innovation, Canadian Poultry Research Council, Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada, Dutch Research Council, and German Research Foundation.

Mona Giersberg

Mona Giersberg is Associate Professor and coordinator of the AI & Animal Welfare Lab at Utrecht University, the Netherlands. Her research is located at the crossroads of (animal) welfare, sensor-based and precision livestock farming (PLF), and ethics. As a researcher she realized that many animal-related societal issues are too complex to be tackled by the methods of animal science alone. Giersberg sought collaboration with working groups in the fields of humanities and social sciences and expanded her methodologies to include various empirical and non-empirical approaches from these disciplines. Currently, she works on a systematic and strategic approach to transdisciplinary collaboration in the area of responsible AI for animal welfare. Giersberg holds a PhD on the topic of biometric data of farm animals and computer-based techniques to collect these. It was defended with honors and received several awards. Before moving to Utrecht, Giersberg worked as a researcher at Wageningen University and Research (NL) and at the University of Veterinary Medicine Hannover, Foundation (DE).

Kai Liu

Dr. Kai Liu is an Assistant Professor specializing in precision livestock farming and animal behaviour and welfare at the Jockey Club College of Veterinary Medicine and Life Sciences, City University of Hong Kong (Hong Kong SAR, China). He earned his PhD in Agricultural and Biological Engineering (Animal Production Systems Engineering) from Iowa State University (USA) and a bachelor’s degree in Biosystems Engineering from Zhejiang University (China). In 2018, he embarked on a postdoctoral research position at the Swine Teaching and Research Center at the University of Pennsylvania (USA). As an agricultural and biological engineer deeply committed to animal agriculture, he is dedicated to applying innovative engineering strategies and data-driven solutions to address global challenges in food animal production and sustainability, with a keen emphasis on the ever-growing issues related to animal welfare and behaviour. His scholarly efforts have resulted in the publication of 38 papers in esteemed SCI journals. Recognized for his contributions, he was honoured as part of the 2019 Class “New Faces of ASABE – Professionals” by the American Society of Agricultural and Biological Engineers. Since May 2022, he has served as an associate Editor at Computers and Electronics in Agriculture. He is also a board member of China Animal Agriculture Association.

Hassan-Roland Nasser

Dr. Hassan-Roland Nasser is a Researcher in Agroscope’s Digital Production Group, where he joined in 2020. He leads the group’s computer vision initiative, a flagship project aiming at democratizing the use of computer vision in agriculture. His research focuses on applying data analysis techniques, particularly image analysis through deep learning, to agricultural challenges. He collaborates closely with animal and crop scientists to answer research questions.
Before joining Agroscope, Dr. Nasser held academic positions at several French and Lebanese universities for six years (Faculty of Engineering and Computer Science). He earned a Master’s degree in Biomedical Engineering from the University of Technology of Compiegne and a PhD in Computational Neuroscience from the French National Institute for Computer Science (INRIA).

Maciej Oczak

Maciej Oczak is a coordinator of Precision Livestock Farming Hub at the University of Veterinary Medicine in Vienna, Austria, since March 2019. His role as the HUB coordinator is to facilitate research at Vetmeduni related to animal monitoring with sensor technologies and to bridge the gap between engineering and animal science at the university. Maciej Oczak is a bioscience engineer with over seven years of experience in the field of PLF, which he obtained in The Netherlands, Belgium and Austria. He has four years of experience working for companies leading in the application of PLF in practical on-farm conditions. Maciej Oczak finished his PhD at M3 BIORES research group at Catholic University in Leuven, Belgium.
His research is focused on Precision Livestock Farming and computer vision for phenotyping e.g. behaviour detection. Recent research interests concentrate on the application of object detection, key point detection, tracking and on techniques for increasing robustness of existing visual recognition networks in challenging farm environments i.e. synthetic data.

Hubert Pausch

Hubert Pausch studied Agricultural Sciences at TU Munich with a focus on Animal Production. He received his PhD in 2013 under the supervision of Prof. Ruedi Fries at TU Munich, and did a Postdoc under the supervision of Prof. Mike Goddard at the Center for AgriBiosciences, in Bundoora, Victoria, Australia. Hubert has been Professor of Animal Genomics with the Institute of Agricultural Sciences, Department of Environmental Systems Science, ETH Zurich since May 2017. His main research area is the development and implementation of statistical and bioinformatic approaches for combining sequence data from key animals in a population with incomplete data from animals from the genomic selection. His team successfully identified allelic variations which have economic and health-related effects. Another research focus of the Animal Genomics group is genome assembly and pangenome integration in order to identify trait-associated structural variation.

Victor Cabrera

Dr. Cabrera combines applied research, interdisciplinary approaches, and participatory methods to deliver practical, data-driven, user-friendly, and scientific decision support tools for dairy farm management. These scientific tools are improving dairy farm profitability, environmental stewardship, and long-term sustainability. Dr. Cabrera’s research and extension programs have a global impact. Dr. Cabrera and his workgroup have developed 50 decision support tools, published 100+ refereed articles, and 12 book chapters. Dr. Cabrera has presented in 100+ scientific sessions, and given extension talks in 400+ extension meetings in Wisconsin, other States, and around the world. Dr. Cabrera’s work in the past 15 years has been pivotal to attract $5.5+ million to support his research and extension initiatives. Dr. Cabrera has been distinguished with the Excellence in International Activities Award from the College of Agricultural and Life Sciences, University of Wisconsin-Madison, the American Dairy Science Association DeLaval Dairy Extension Award, the University of Wisconsin-Madison Vilas Faculty Mid-Career Investigator Award, the Second Mile Extension award of the Wisconsin Association of County Agricultural Agents, the Pound Extension Award from the University of Wisconsin-Madison College of Agriculture and Life Sciences, the Distinguished Achievement Award from the University of Florida School of Natural Resources and Environment, the Foundation Scholar Award in Dairy Production from the American Dairy Science Association, and the Alfred Toepfer Faculty Fellow Award from the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

Pieter-Jan De Temmerman

Pieter-Jan De Temmerman has 15 years of interdisciplinary professional experience and leads the Precision Livestock Farming Artificial Intelligence team at ILVO (Flanders Research Institute for Agriculture, Fisheries and Food, Belgium). He is a member of ILVO’s AI Working Group and the Ethical Committee on Artificial Intelligence.
The collaborative research of his team spans diverse domains and projects, including pigs (PigID, PigLife, aWish), dairy cattle (ClawCare, XGain), demersal fisheries (Visim II, Optifish, Everyfish, Marine Beacon), new genomic techniques (Detective), and emerging technologies such as hyperspectral imaging, drones, and robotics (FAIR, AgrifoodTEF). His expertise encompasses practical applications in AI-powered livestock monitoring, with a strong focus on deep learning, computer vision, (big) data analytics, knowledge graphs, and precision farming innovations.
Academically, Pieter-Jan holds a Master’s in Statistical Data Analysis and both a Master’s and PhD in Bioscience Engineering. He has contributed to 25 scientific works on computer vision and nanomaterials using transmission electron microscopy. Since 2023, he has focused his research on applying AI to animal science, combining his agricultural background with his computational expertise.
Recent work of his team includes five scientific works on topics such as segmentation and classification of demersal fish species, claw health monitoring in dairy cows, outdoor cattle tracking, and behavioral analysis and identification of piglets, sows, and fattening pigs.

Maria-Anastasia Karatzia

Maria-Anastasia Karatzia grew up in Thessaloniki, and studied in the School of Agriculture at the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki (AUTH), where she graduated from with a specialization in Animal Science. Afterwards, she completed a Master’s degree course in Animal Science as well, and later she defended her thesis on clinical nutrition in ruminants at the School of Veterinary Medicine (AUTH). In 2017, she was appointed as a researcher at the Research Institute of Animal Science of the Hellenic Agricultural Organization “Demeter” in the field of Farm Animal Husbandry. In correspondence to her research interests (precision livestock technologies in transhumant flocks and development of animal-based welfare indicators for an approach towards improving the welfare of small ruminants), Maria was elected as secretary of the Commission on Precision Livestock Farming of the EAAP.

Jarissa Maselyne

Jarissa Maselyne is coordinating the Precision Livestock Farming (PLF) research group of ILVO (Flanders research institute for Agriculture, Fisheries and Food, Belgium). She is also President of the PLF-commission at EAAP and editor for the journal Animal.
She is a Master of Science in Electromechanical Engineering (Ghent University), and PhD graduate in Bioscience Engineering (KU Leuven & ILVO).
Jarissa has been involved in several H2020 projects related to Internet of Things (IOF2020), High Performance Computing (CYBELE) and Renewable Energy (RES4LIVE) for livestock farming. She is coordinating the Horizon Europe project aWISH and the national VLAIO project PigID with her team. aWISH deals with large-scale automated animal welfare monitoring of broilers and pigs through novel sensors and AI algorithms at the slaughterhouse, to measure welfare indicators tracing back to the farm, catching, transport and slaughter process itself. PigID is focused on helping pig farmers start with electronic identification and quantifying the added value of individual pig management. Other running projects include XGain, PIGWEB, EU-LI-PHE, agrifoodTEF, digital twin for pigs, etc. The PLF team at ILVO thus deals with topics from research over innovation to industry adoption, and from sensors over AI and digital twins to informed decision making for farmers and other stakeholders.

Matti Pastell

Matti Pastell is a Research professor in Future Farming technologies in the Natural Resources Institute Finland (Luke). He has been working on AI in agriculture and precision livestock farming applications for over 15 years. He is working on sensor-based welfare assessment of dairy cattle, sensor-based phenotyping and developing digital twins of farming systems. He is currently coordinating the case studies of the Digi4Live project https://digi4live.eu/ .