Presentation title:
The Role of Global Telecom Infrastructure Provider for Enhancement of IoT in Farms

Elie Aad holds Master’s degree in Management of New Technologies and Telecom Strategies and has extensive experience in the telecom field. He is the head of IoT vertical product development at Nokia global services, leading the IoT vertical development in Nokia WING – Worldwide Internet of Things Network Grid.

Presentation title:
IRRIGA Global: Innovations in Irrigation Management

Dr. Reimar Carlesso graduated in Agronomy (1982) and pursued with a master’s degree in Agricultural Engineering (1987) at Federal University of Santa Maria, and a PhD in Crop and Soil Science, at Michigan State University, USA (1993).

He was full professor of the Rural Engineering Department at Federal University of Santa Maria since 1985 till 2018 when retired, and during his career he has been enrolled in two graduate programs: Agricultural Engineering and Soil Science with twenty-two PhD thesis and forty-one Master’s dissertations advised completed and has published more than 100 peer-reviewed papers.

The main objectives of his researches and business strategies are the development of research strategies to improve water and energy use efficiency in irrigated areas, evaluating all variables of the soil water balance, plant water consumption and crop water atmospheric demand processes to improve water and energy use efficiency in irrigated areas.

In 2008, he patented the Irrigation Management Computerized System (Computer Program) number: 0000270805491914, which generated a spinoff company named SI Service Ltda., to support the growers demand for a reliable irrigation management service in South America. In 2014, the Irriga System SA was created in Switzerland to attend the international market and, nowadays IRRIGA provides irrigation management service for more than 40 000 hectares in Europe and globally about 200 000 ha.

Presentation title:
Why is AgTech so Important to Our Industry? What Is at Stake?

Georgiana joined ADAMA in 2013, bringing 16 years of digital marketing & communication experience to the agricultural world. Georgiana’s focus is to bring value to farmers through innovative AgTech solutions and services. Her role is to inspire colleagues around the world to think out of the box and come up with solutions that help farmers obtain better quality and yield while alleviating the needs and pain points the whole agricultural eco-system face today.
“In ADAMA, we believe that there is no one-size-fits-all solution. While farmers may face the same issues and needs, there will also be elements that make these issues unique to them. We also believe that in order to bring value, we cannot do this alone. Bringing our core competence in agronomy and crop protection and partnering with technology companies that can bring the right solution is the key to success”
Since the beginning of her journey with ADAMA, Georgiana has done just that. Finding partners and building relationships to offer farmers just the right service. Through Pessl Instruments, Adama introduces innovative technology that clearly addresses issues that our customers have identified.

Presentation title:
Field Monitoring and Breeding Technologies with IoT

Dr. Henk Groth studied Biology in Göttingen, specializing in Systematic Botany. During his PhD, he took up programming as an additional subject, to be able to organize and analyze the data for his studies.
In 2006 he started working at the Maize breeding department at KWS SAAT SE as product-owner for breeding databases.
In 2017 he switched to the IT department and has held the position of a Digital Enterprise Architect since then. Half of his working hours are devoted to the Digital Innovation Accelerator – a small group within KWS to sniff out new digital opportunities for KWS SAAT SE.
He splits his spare time between gardening, Science-Fiction and the KWS Dragonboat Team.

Presentation title:
Changes: Climate, Politics, Technology and us

Dr. Karl G. Gutbrod is the CEO of meteoblue AG, a Swiss meteorology data provider founded in 2006 as a Spin-of the University of Basel, Switzerland. Karl came to meteoblue with 25 years of experience in international agri-business, as project and unit leader in development, product management, marketing, business development and information services. Karl has worked for GTZ, DED, Ciba, Novartis and Syngenta. He has lived and worked in Germany, Switzerland, United States, Brazil, Thailand, and China, and other places. Karl holds a PhD in agronomy from the University of Göttingen, Germany. In addition to his day job, he teaches courses the University of Cooperative Education in Lörrach, Germany, and supervises Bachelor students there in the subjects of Decision Theory, Innovation Management, Marketing and International Business Strategy.
In 09-2018, Karl has joined the Board of directors of PRIMET, the pan European Trade Association for meteorological service providers operating in the private sector.

Presentation titles:

Tradition x Innovation + respecting the 4 elements = making money, is it possible?

The Challenge to Produce 3 Crops Per Year in Sandy Tropical Soils – Is It Sustainable?

Bernhard Kiep has spent over 25 years working around the World in Irrigation & Agriculture Equipment Industry. He is the executive for Valmont/Valley Irrigation, CNHi and AGCO. Currently Managing Director of Bermad Brazil, Board member of Terra Viva Group, Harvard Alumni Angels Club Brazil and Pessl Instruments in Weiz/Austria.
Managing Partner of Mid-size Farm group (3.500 HA) with diversified activities. Irrigated and dry land farming of Soybean, Corn, Sorghum and Eatable beans. Professional Beef Cattle, Dairy and Eucalyptus.
Happily married with 2 wonderful Sons and good Mentor/Coach for some and BS for others ;o)

Presentation title:
Livestock Application and Animal Welfare

Dr Srđan Krčo is a co-founder and CEO of DunavNET, a company designing turnkey IOT solutions for smart cities, agriculture and manufacturing. He has over 20 years of experience, working with large multinational companies and international collaborative research and innovation projects. He coordinated a large H2020 project TagItSmart, creating IoT enablers facilitating improvement and transparency in the food supply chain and more general in the FMCG domain. Srdjan is one of the founding members of the International IoT Forum and is actively participating in IoT-EPI (IoT European Platforms Initiative) and AIOTI (Alliance for IoT Innovation) activities. In 2007, Srdjan won the Innovation Engineer of the Year award in Ireland. He has published over 15 patents and more than 70 papers at international conferences and journals. Srdjan holds Associate Professor position at FEFA (Faculty for Economy and Financial Administration) where he works with students on business aspects of IoT and digital transformation. He is a frequent speaker at international events addressing IoT and its applications. Srdjan is a Senior IEEE member and has MVP (most valuable professional) status for IoT activities awarded by Microsoft.

Presentation title:
The John Deere Operation Center and Its Role in Future Farm Operations

Georg Larscheid is responsible for Marketing and Sales of John Deere self-propelled, trailed and mounted sprayers for agricultural production in EAME region since 2007. This includes the successful development and execution of Strategic Marketing plans, which support the growth ambitions set by senior leadership of John Deere. Since 2011 he is the Manager of Integrated Solutions Implementation of John Deere.

Presentation title:
Food Security, Input Reduction and Risk Minimization with the Help of IoT

Miroslaw Maziarka is the Co-owner and President of “Agro Smart Lab” company.
Agro Smart Lab is the research and implementation center. We combine new technologies with knowledge and experience of experts in the agricultural industry.
We are looking for and implementing new solutions that improve the quality and safety of agricultural products throughout the whole supply chain – from field to plate. They work with research units and startups in Poland and abroad.

Presentation title:
The Future of Satellite Data in Agriculture, in Perspective of Modern Cloud Computing

Born in 1980 in Slovenia, he studied Physics and co-founded Cosylab inc. at age 21, a company developing control systems for particle accelerators and large experiments in physics. In 2008 Grega moved to become CEO and co-founder of Sinergise, specialising in software for advanced geospatial applications, helping Europe to efficiently manage and control agriculture policy and introducing land administration systems to developing countries in Africa.
With his colleagues they have recognised the potential of open Copernicus earth observation data early but soon hit a wall trying to use existing technologies to work with these large datasets. Deciding to do something about it, Sentinel Hub was born. A Copernicus Masters award winning service for processing and distribution of satellite data is exploiting AWS Public Datasets to provide seamless access to the data to more than 10.000 registered users, mostly web developers creating applications on top of remote sensing data.
After working with governmental clients in Balkan, Western Europe, Asia and Africa, Grega is now engulfed in building a global Internet business, which is nowadays processing more than five million requests every day.

Presentation title:
Precision Farming and RoI in Precision Farming; Risks and Challenges

Thomas Muhr founded geo-konzept in 1992 and since then is managing the company as the general manager. In addition he runs an arable farm of 220 ha in the center of Bavaria, Germany. Thomas is a certified farmer by profession and has aquired a degree in agricultural engineering from the technical university of Munich in 1989 with a focus on plant production and electronics in agriculture.
geo-konzept has its roots in using GNSS systems for the survey of farm fields and highly accurate guidance systems for farm machinery. The survey, collection and interpretation of heterogenous soil properties with the integration of remote sensing, meteorological data as well as process data from machinery operations are forming another strong part of geo-konzept’s current offering to the agricultural market. Products from leading suppliers like Pessl Systems, Trimble, Topcon, Reichhardt combined with services and a web based precision farming platform FarmInfo make geo-konzept’s team of 60 people a one-stop service point for OEMs, crop advisors and farmers alike. Beyond agriculture geo-konzept is offering digital workflow solutions and systems for open pit mining and blasting. Multi- and hyperspectral camera systems, UAS and specialized software solutions are substantial to the portfolio of geo-konzept and serving both the mining and agricultural businesses.
A capable crew of technicians in the field and a dedicated support group are available in several offices across the DACH area to underpin the claim of not providing components and products only but working solutions.

Presentation title:
Plant protection 2032: The Researchers View

Dr. Ilaria Pertot is full professor of plant pathology at the University of Trento. Previously he worked for 20 years as a researcher at the Edmund Mach Foundation (www.fmach.it) where he coordinated the Sustainable and Bioresource Agroecosystem Department for several years.

After obtaining his Ph.D. in crop protection at the University of Udine, Italy, she continued her research career mainly dealing with research and development of sustainable production in agriculture, low impact methods for plant protection against pathogens and pests, effect of climate change on plants and their pests and on new or emerging plant diseases.
She carried out his research activity alternating various periods of activity in prestigious research centers in the United States (UC Berkeley), Switzerland (Zurich Federal Polytechnic) and Israel (Volcani Center). He worked in Belgium as a scientific director at a company that develops biopesticides and as a researcher at a multinational pharmaceutical company.
Her skills range from organic and sustainable agriculture, food safety, microbiology, molecular biology and epidemiology to the industrial development of biopesticides. She is the inventor of 4 patents relating to biofungicides (one of which is a product currently on the market in various European countries) and the author of more than 200 scientific and technical publications.
She is vice president of the International Organization for Biological Control and Integrated Pest Management (IOBC-wprs) and coordinator of numerous international research projects.

Presentation title:
Pessl Instruments and Lawrence Tractor Company – A Story of a Successful Partnership

Chris Ramos is the Precision Ag Manager for Lawrence Tractor, a John Deere dealer located in the San Joaquin Valley of California. He was raised on family farm which grew a variety of crops including cotton, corn and tomatoes and has been with LTC for nearly ten years. He values working with his team on integrating new technologies and programs that will provide valuable solutions to LTC customers. In his spare time time he enjoys spending time with his wife and two children on their family ranch.

Presentation title:
Aquagri Irrigation Management Services, Myirrigation platform

Irrigation Water Management Specialist, on-farm and in-field Irrigation and drainage design and Institutional Development. Development and implementation of training programs for different target groups.
30 years of experience in the Netherlands, Portugal, Spain, Algeria, Brazil, Kyrgyzstan, Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan, Tajikistan, Georgia, Armenia, Moldova, Morocco, Mozambique, Russia, Somalia, Ethiopia, Cabo Verde, Chile, South Africa and Ukraine.
Founder and managing partner of AQUAGRI International Irrigation Management (Portugal) and AGRIPRECISION (Maroc) Irrigation Management Services.

Presentation title:
Partnership Model for the Integration of Agriculture Machinery Companies to Make Intelligent Machines with IoTs

Ariadna Tost Sentis grew up in a farming family which produces high quality wine and olive oil.
She is a Precision Agriculture professional and has been involved in the development of AgroMapia and Cloud SW for imagery and automated Variable Rate with the ability to share info between users, and has set up the AG Department of a Cartography company.
Since 2016 she works in management and business modelling for an Ag Consultancy company where they use aerial imagery & GIS for R&D, Grapes harvest prediction, variability management and automated Variable Rate and collaborate with John Deere, Trimble and Topcon.

Presentation title:
Managing the Challenges in Residuals and Food Security

Dr. Zumdick joined SGS in 2002, as Operational and Business Manager in the SGS Life Science and SGS Agriculture. He has since been promoted the Global Business Manager, SGS AFL Seed & Crop Services.

Prior to joining SGS, Dr. Zumdick spent 12 years working in different companies gaining experience in product development for the crop protection industry. .

Presentation titles:
Day 1: Remote Sensing in Agriculture – Does the Satellite’s Beam Touch Our Wings

Day 2: Triggers and Drivers of our past and future development

Dr. Heiner Denzer holds a PhD in Agriculture from the Justus Liebig Universität Giessen. He has 10 years of experience in grape vine plant pathology in Rheinhessen, Baden and Südtirol. Since 1995 in cooperation with Gottfried Pessl influencing the research and development of Pessl Instruments.

Presentation title:
Examples in the Use of Sentinel 2 Data

Workshop:
Satellite-based services within FieldClimate – Tell us your view

Dr. Marcela Doubkova has been working as a remote sensing and GIS specialist at Pessl Instruments since June 2017. She has a rich remote sensing expertise that she gathered at institutions such as European Space Agency (ESA), University of Nebraska in Lincoln or Vienna University of Technology since 2006. In her past, she assisted in projects using optical and microwave remote sensing data to study ecological changes in grasslands, leaded projects to develop new algorithms from sensors such as Sentinel-1, ENVISAT or ASCAT, or used hydrological models to validate soil moisture remote sensing products over Australia.
At Pessl Instruments, Marcela supports tasks related to Remote Sensing, GIS and cartography. She leads the development of Sentinel-2-related products as well as the development of the new Farm View perspective in Fieldclimate.

Presentation title:
The Field Concept: A New Aspect on Data Value

Mario Höfler holds a MSc in Telematics from Graz University of Technology with specialization in computational intelligence, computer graphics & vision. Software career started with geotechnical analysis of rock mass imagery, assessment for industrial microscopy applications, and aerial triangulation pipelines for a global mapping initiative within Microsoft. Co-founded a machine learning project accepted at Science Park Graz before joining Pessl Instruments R&D team. Since 2019 coordinator in product management and responsible for software products.

Presentation title:
The iMETOS Mobilab Product, Experience and Perspectives

Workshop:
Soil Analysis

Günther da Luz-Kriechhammer finished undergrad studies in Botany and Genetics in Innsbruck – M.Sc of Biochemistry at the University of Graz. During studies in São Paulo (Brazil) he was involved in capillary electrophoresis, which has become the core method for the iMETOS MobiLab. He is developing microfluidic application ever since.

Presentation title:
Chances and Challenges Using LoRa

Workshop:
LoRa and IoT

Uros Males joined Pessl Instruments in 2012 as a Firmware Developer. His focus has been in IoT, in both firmware and software development, integrations between different network providers and PI cloud system, field testing, client support and partner collaborations. Currently he is managing LPWAN products – iMetosLoRa Clima, iMETOS LoRa RAIN, iMETOS LoRain, iMetosNBIoT, iMetos ActiveTracker and iMetos ObjectTracker.

Presentation title:
The New Mobile Apps

Dr. Michael Parth holds a MSc in Chemistry from University of Graz and a PhD in Polymer Engineering from University of Leoben, MBA with a focus in Change Management from University of Graz.
In the years 1997-2000 he has worked as a research assistant at the university of Leoben, 2000-2003 technical expert at the local government of Styria for permitting industrial installations and environmental accidents, 2003-2007 project manager at the European Commission in Seville, Spain, 2007-2018 Engineering program manager at NXP semiconductors. He has joined Pessl Instruments team as a CTO in 2018.

Workshop:
Disease models & Plant Protection

Dr. Christina Pilz has been working for Pessl Instruments since November 2014. She is mainly responsible for the Decision Support Systems in Plant Protection (Disease models and Camera Products). Her professional expertise particularly lies in microbiological control on agricultural pest insects. She has been studying agriculture at the University of Agriculture and Applied Life Sciences (BOKU) in Vienna. Further on she concentrated for about 10 years on the biology and on control strategies of pest insects at the Research Station Agroscope in Zürich and the Plant Protection Service in Hungary and Agency for Health and Food Security, Austria. Five years ago she started at Pessl Instruments to support the disease model calculations and during last two years she got additional experience in electronically monitoring devices of pest insects in fields.

Presentation title:
iMETOS MobiLab and Nitrogen

Dr. Jost Potrpin holds a PhD in bioscience from Bioptechnical faculty in Ljubljana. He joined Pessl Instruments team in 2017 as a product manager – first as a manager of agronomical aspects of complete portfolio, then as product manager for camera family products and finally as a global product manager for iMETOS MobiLab.

Presentation title:
Work Planning