Meet the APC 2023 Keynote Speakers

Andrew May is Co-Chief Executive Officer at UniGrain. Unigrain is an Australian-based food and agribusiness, specialising in the manufacture of oat- and pulse-based food ingredients. Unigrain produces a diverse range of products encompassing both traditional cereal and pulse ingredients for the domestic and Asian markets, as well as more recently expanding into pulse proteins and other fractionated plant-based products.

In 2000 he moved to CSIRO in Canberra, Australia, for a second postdoctoral fellowship using gene technology to modify starch structure and function in the model plant Arabidopsis. At the end of 2002 he moved into the area of cereal quality. Since then he has had a diverse range of interests: carotenoid biosynthesis in cereal grains, how manipulation of protein content and composition impacts end product functionality, the genetics of end product quality in wheat and modification of grain composition for health benefits.

Juraj Durco is a natural collaborator, food technologist, consultant and R&D leader currently heading Plant Protein Innovation Hub for Kraft Heinz. His role is to promote agile innovation ecosystem by leveraging internal and external partners with one objective – developing delicious plant protein-based food for many, not few.

David Herridge is currently an Adjunct Professor, School of Environmental and Rural Science, University of New England, Armidale. For the 11 years prior to that, he was Research Professor, Soil Productivity, UNE, and the 40 years prior to that was with the NSW Department of Primary Industries. 

Rebecca is a collaborative, interdisciplinary and outcome focused research leader. Her broad focus is to improve sustainability of food production systems, in developing and implementing novel tools for informed disease management and selective breeding.

Douglas R. Cook is a Professor at the University of California-Davis. He received his doctoral degree from the University of Wisconsin-Madison and conducted postdoctoral research at the Carnegie Institution of Washington’s Department of Embryology at The Johns Hopkins University. 

Victor Sadras has measured, modelled and developed theory on the water, nitrogen and carbon economies of annual (wheat, maize, oat, cotton, sunflower, soybean, pulses) and perennial crops (grapevine, olive) in rainfed and irrigated systems of Australia, Argentina, and China. His most important scientific contribution is an ongoing theoretical model of crop yield accounting for agronomic, physiological, ecological, and evolutionary factors including genomic conflict, transitions in the units of selection, phenotypic plasticity, plant-insect relations, and resource co-limitation.