Dr. Ann Van Soom

Ann Van Soom graduated in 1988 as DVM at the faculty of Veterinary Medicine, Ghent University, Belgium, and obtained a Ph.D. in the development of bovine embryos in 1996. She has been employed at Ghent University since 1990. At present, she holds a position as a full professor at the Department of Reproduction, Obstetrics and Herd Health, Faculty of Veterinary Medicine, Ghent University, and is also Head of Department. She has been teaching assisted reproduction in domestic species, small animal reproduction, and obstetrics to veterinary students for more than 20 years now. She is a diplomat of the European College of Animal Reproduction (ECAR) since 1999 and has been a member of the EVSSAR and the IETS for many years. She has been elected as a governor for IETS in 2007 and in 2013. She was a member and Chair of the HASAC (Health and Safety Advisory Committee) Research subcommittee of IETS for about ten years. She was chair of the COST Action Epiconcept FA1201 from 2012-2016, and was a member of the EU-ITN network RepBiotech, and is now involved in EU-ITN network EUrova. She is also serving in national and international advisory committees on sanitary risks involved with assisted reproduction in domestic species and has been authoring a chapter in the 4th edition of the IETS Manual dealing with these problems. She is supervising a group of about 10 Ph.D. students and three postdocs working together on embryonic development and semen quality in different model species, like horses, cattle, cats, dogs, and pigs. The main goals of the research performed at the Reproductive Biology Unit are to determine the causes of epigenetic changes and inferior quality of in vitro produced embryos by focusing on the suboptimal culture conditions in vitro and, on the other hand, the embryo-maternal interaction in vivo. We aim to define key molecules and messengers, like extracellular vesicles, involved in oocyte maturation and in the embryo-maternal dialogue as well as in the communication between oocytes/embryos during group culture in vitro. We are also focusing on factors affecting fresh and frozen semen quality in different domestic species. Molecular biology, including whole-genome sequencing, and protein analysis has been used as a tool to evaluate gene expression, chromosomal instability, and secretions of oocytes and embryos, and to investigate interactions with the maternal tract and during in vitro culture, and to gain insight into underlying mechanisms and pathways. Prof. Van Soom has published more than 350 papers with an h-index of 46. She has up to now (July 2021) supervised a total of 38 Ph.D. students as the main supervisor or cosupervisor. She has served in the examination committee of 20 international Ph.D. students and more than 30 national Ph.D. students. Her clinical activities are related to small animal reproduction, with an emphasis on semen collection, (research on) gamete cryopreservation, and artificial insemination in cats and dogs. She is also visiting catteries and dog breeding facilities that are experiencing breeding problems. She is offering advice for applying new methods of contraception and oestrus induction in dogs and cats to practicing veterinarians, as well as giving advice in small animal obstetrics. Finally, she has been breeding English springer spaniels and Somali cats as a hobby.

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Dr. Dariusz Piwczyński

Prof Dariusz Piwczyński, PhD has been a member of faculty at the Department of Animal Breeding and Biology, at the Bydgoszcz University of Science and Technology since 1991. In 1996, he defended his doctoral thesis (Effects of the first stage of crossing displacing Suffolk rams x Polish Merino ewes in Zalesie), and in 2009, the Board of the Animal Breeding and Biology Department conferred on him the degree of doctor habilitatus in the field of agricultural sciences, and the discipline of animal husbandry. Prof Piwczyński qualified for the postdoctoral examination based on his postdoctoral dissertation, “Improvement of production traits in the Polish Merino sheep”. During the course of his professional career, Prof D. Piwczyński, Ph.D., has held a number of organisational roles at the Department, namely: Deputy Dean for Teaching, Deputy Dean for Science, and the head of the Department of Genetics and Animal Breeding Fundamentals. Prof D. Piwczyński, Ph.D., has since 2015 been a member of the Editorial Board for the Zootechnica series of the Acta Scientiarum Polonorum periodical. In the years 2016–20, he was the head of the Polish editorial team for the Journal of Central European Agriculture; while from 2020, he has been a sectional editor at the Livestock Studies periodical published in Türkiye. Starting in early 2021, Prof Dariusz Piwczyński, Ph.D. took over the role of the head of the Bydgoszcz branch of the Polish Society of Animal Production; at the same time, being a member of the General Board. So far, he has published 320 papers, including 150 original articles It should be noted that Prof D. Piwczyński, Ph.D., was invited many times to present lectures at international conferences. He teaches classes on the application of statistical analysis in the evaluation of biological data. In 2012, he conducted a week-long course on statistics for the attendees at the International School for Doctoral Students in Italy. Piwczyński, Ph.D., gave lectures to students of foreign universities as part of the ERASMUS programme in countries such as Slovakia, Türkiye, Greece, Bulgaria, or Hungary. His current area of academic interest focuses on biostatistics, population genetics, sheep and dairy cattle breeding – determinants of production and functional traits, genetic parameters, breeding value, and assessment of the influence of the automatic milking system on the production and functional traits of dairy cows.

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Dr. Theodore A. Tsiligiridis

Professor T. Tsiligiridis received his B.Sc in mathematics from the University of Athens, Greece, his M.Sc in probability and statistics from Manchester University, UK, and his Ph.D. in telecommunications from the Dept of Electronic and Electrical Engineering, University of Strathclyde, Scotland, UK. Shortly after his graduation, he joined the Computer Science, Mathematics, and Statistical Division of the Agricultural University of Athens (AUA), and then, in 2014, he moved to the Department of Agricultural Economy and Development of the same University. He served as a Director of an M.Sccourse in Geoinformatics at the Department of General Sciences of AUA (2008-2014) supervising successfully many MSc and Ph.D. students. Professor Tsiligiridis has published numerous research papers on networking, artificial intelligence, and e-services on Information and Communications Technologies (ICT), particularly applied in the agricultural sector. He has served on several program committees of related conferences and editorial boards. Research fields include Computer Networking, Geoinformatics, WebGis, Location Based Services (LBS), Precision Agriculture (PA), Remote Sensing (RS), Decision Support Systems (DSS), Evolutionary Systems (ES), and Multimedia Technologies (MT). He currently works in the area of artificial intelligence focusing on machine and deep learning, as well as, in neural networks applied in computer networking and bio-earth environmental sectors. The specific applications he is interested in concentrate on sensor networks, LBS and RS applied in PA and big AgriData operations, as well as on WebGIS technologies, which are applied in environmentally pervasive systems. Professor Tsiligiridis worked in various public and academic posts and he coordinated many research and development projects. He was actively involved in the projects RACE I/II/EC (Advanced Telecommunications), DELTA/EC (Distance Learning), and ORA/EC (Tele-services in Rural Areas). He particularly worked in the areas of mobile cellular systems (R1044/RACE I/EC; 1987), performance evaluation on LANs (RSRE/MOD; 1988), and teleservices in rural areas (R2022/RACE II/EC; 1992, DART/TAP/EC 1996). He also coordinated many activities of the GREEK PLAN/EU project for Restructuring Agricultural Surveys (Decisions: 85/360, 90/386, 92/587 of the EU Council of Ministers), as well as, the EUROFARM/EU project (1999/2000 Farm Structure Survey), under the supervision of Eurostat and the National Statistical Service of Greece. Under the auspice of the European GoDigital/EU project, he coordinated a project for introducing Internet services and e-commerce practices in around 3000 SMEs in rural areas of the Peloponnesus peninsula of Greece. At this time, he has also participated in some FP7 projects related to sensor network technologies in the bio-earth environmental sector. In 2012-2015 he has coordinated an open access e-learning institutional project providing academic courses and initiated the operation of the AUA Learning Support Center (LSC). He also coordinated the FruitFlyNet/ENPI CBC MED/EU/Standard: II-B_2.1_0856/2013-2015 project which developed a Location-Aware System (LAS) for fruit fly e-monitoring and pest management control. FruitFlyNet is an advanced Integrated Pest Management (IPM) system, which contributes to the development and implementation of environmentally effective e-monitoring and ground spraying control solutions based on prototypes, technological innovations, and knowledge transfer for specific key-pests in the Mediterranean regions. During the last five years, Professor Tsiligiridis participated in the SALSA/HORIZON 2020/EU/GA No:677363/2016-2020 project aiming to assess the role of small farms and small food businesses in delivering a sustainable and secure supply of affordable, nutritious, and culturally adequate food. Our involvement was related to the identification of the crop types in specific regions using RS. Nowadays, he coordinates the project FruitFlyNet-ii/Strategic: B_A.2.1_0043/ENICBCMED/EU/2020-2023, aiming to develop, optimize, and commercialize an automated monitoring and control system against the olive and med fruit flies of the Mediterranean region.