What is happening in the AgriFoRwArdS CDT?
The AgriFoRwArdS CDT team are always planning new and exciting CDT activities
To read more about some of the activities that have occurred in the past, please visit the Student Blog.
Current students should go to the portal for more information on events and activities.
AgriFoRwArdS CDT Annual Conference 2024
The University of East Anglia (UEA) is delighted to be hosting the fifth AgriFoRwArdS Annual Conference in July 2024, which will take place on 22nd and 23rd July 2024 and will be held at UEA’s Enterprise Centre, a building at the cutting edge of sustainable design.
Over the two days of the conference at UEA’s Enterprise Centre, hear from the following speakers from industry and academia on the exciting theme of Robots in Action:
- Dr Duncan Russell, Ocado
- Cameron Ross, EPSRC
- Trisha Toop, Agri-EPI Centre
- Louise Manning, Lincoln
- Becky Dodds, Agritech-E
- Robin Wang, Living Optics
In addition to keynote speakers and presenters, there will be presentations and panel discussions led by current AgriFoRwArdS students at all institutions: Cambridge University, Lincoln University, and University of East Anglia itself. Poster displays in the foyer will be contributed by MSc students at Lincoln University.
Hosted at the University of East Anglia’s award-winning Sainsbury Centre, an evening social event, which will include a Drinks Reception and canapés, followed by a three course Conference Dinner, will give delegates opportunity to network. The Sainsbury Centre is situated within the UEA’s Sculpture Park, set within 350 acres of beautiful parkland.
AgriFoRwArdS CDT Summer School 2024
The theme for our next AgriFoRwArdS CDT Summer School (taking place 7th to 13th July 2024) is robotic phenotyping. The event is co-organised with Wageningen University and Research (WUR) and will take place at their excellent facilities in the Netherlands. We are planning a week-long set of group activities in which the CDT students will have the opportunity to undertake technical work on various aspects of robotic phenotyping together with crop science/biology PhD students from WUR. The potential tasks include in-field data acquisition from robotic platforms, hi-precision plant reconstruction and segmentation techniques, automated data annotation or techniques for trait extraction. Students will have an opportunity to co-design the tasks to ensure engagement and direct ownership. The tasks will be aligned with the existing projects so that students efforts will have an immediate impact on research developments both at WUR and AgriFoRwArdS CDT. This will be an excellent opportunity to see world-class facilities, to work with the best specialists in the research area and to enhance student’s academic networks. It should be lots of fun too!
AgriFoRwArdS Seminar Series
Following the previous success of the series, we are pleased to announce the return of the Seminar Series in academic year 2023/24. The next set of talks will be hosted by the University of Cambridge. This year it will look slightly different too, instead of a monthly talk, we are going to be holding two Seminar Days, packed full of interesting talks and exciting activities.
In January 2024 the CDT Seminar Series joined with the Lincoln Agri-Robotics (LAR) Mini Conference, an exciting 2.5 day event focused entirely on agri-food robotics, where students saw engaging sessions, insightful discussions, and valuable networking opportunities.
The second AgriFoRwArdS Seminar Event will give students the opportunity to hear from leading experts within agri-robotics. Students will visit the G’s Growers site in Ely in Cambridgeshire, take a tour of the facilities, and hear from people from various areas within the business. This will be joined with the Quarterly Progress Meeting, where CDT Students from Cohort 2 will present their PhD work to other CDT Students and Staff at the University of Cambridge. For the majority of the Cohort this will be their last presentation as part of an AgriFoRwArdS Progress Meeting. We will hear about their project, the last few months of study, and what they have planned for the future.
To be included in future communications regarding the seminar series please email agriforwards.cdt@lincoln.ac.uk.
You can also view previous talks within our Seminar Series Archive.
Joint Robotics CDT Annual Conference 2024
Once a year the four robotics-focused CDTs come together to share their research and network at the Joint Robotics CDT Annual Conference. The 2024 Conference will be hosted by Edinburgh Robotics.
More details coming soon.