Our event speakers are:

Michael Wellington: Michael is involved in the delivery of projects and scientific outcomes from the Digital Earth Africa platform on behalf of Geoscience Australia. He is an agricultural scientist interested in quantitative monitoring and modelling of agricultural systems, particularly using earth observation data. He completed undergraduate studies in agricultural science at the University of Queensland, Australia, and was a farm consultant before embarking on a PhD at the Australian National University studying irrigation schemes in southern Africa with satellite-based remote sensing methods.

Leigh Vial: Dr Leigh Vial came late to international agricultural development, after 15 years farming rice, winter crops and sheep in the NSW Riverina. He took his family to join an ACIAR project in Lao PDR in 2008, whilst also doing his PhD, which led to four years as Head of the Experiment Station at IRRI. Since returning home in 2015, Leigh resumed farming, whilst undertaking an ACIAR small research activity (SRA) in Lao PDR on direct-seeded rice, another SRA and now at Charles Darwin University leading an ACIAR project in Timor-Leste. He has served as a non-executive director (NED) for SunRice, and is a current NED for One Basin CRC and Field Applied Research Pty Ltd.

Waseem Ahmed: Waseem is a PhD student at the Research Institute for Northern Agriculture at Charles Darwin University, starting his PhD in 2024 after a Masters in Food Science and Technology from the University of Agriculture, Pakistan and a degree in Accounting and Marketing from Sydney University. His PhD project looks at using cotton and cattle waste to develop a mushroom circular economy in the NT. He was a Crawford Scholar at this year’s Crawford conference.

Beth Penrose: Beth is an agricultural scientist focussed on pasture systems and the link between plant/soil nutrition and human/animal/environmental health. She leads the Sustainable Pastoral Systems group at Charles Darwin University, and is responsible for the livestock and the nutritional yield components of the Timor Leste project that Leigh is leading. She has previously worked between maize and beef projects in Vietnam, linking the cropping activities and livestock production for better environmental and production outcomes. She is on the NT RAID committee.