Keynote Speaker - Tomas Norton

Modern day livestock farming is facing the perfect storm. Environmental pollution, animal welfare and anti-microbial resistance present great challenges to animal farming across the world. Precision Livestock Farming promises to give livestock farmers the tools and procedures to enable more efficient production while at the same time providing information helping them take better care of animal health and welfare. However, while we have seen many recent technical innovations in the field of animal monitoring, the practial ICT tools now available are still limited across many of the livestock production sectors. In this talk I will discuss the gap between research and implementation and give possible solutions to closing this gap in the future.

Tomas Norton is leading a research group in Precision Livestock Farming (PLF) in the Division of Animal and Human and Health Engineering (group of M3-BIORES) at the KU Leuven. He holds a PhD in Biosystems Engineering from University College Dublin (Ireland) and is a Fellow of both the Institute of Agricultural Engineers (FIAgrE) and the International Academy of Agricultural and Biosystems Engineers (FiAABE). His current research focus is on PLF applications, focussing on modelling and monitoring of animal responses for improved welfare, health and productivity. He is PI and co-PI on collaborative National and International projects funded by the Belgium government, H2020 and USA. He is author of 80+ SCI publications, 50+ conference proceedings, 10 book chapters and co-editor of one book. He has given over 20 keynotes/invited presentations on his research. Currently he is co-coordinator of courses on Measuring, Modelling and Managing Bio-responses and Sustainable PLF at the KU Leuven. Since 2018 he is Chair of Section 2 of International Commission of Agricultural and Biosystems Engineering (CIGR). He also acts as Editor-in-Chief at the Elsevier journal Computers and Electronics in Agriculture. He is a series editor for the upcoming Springer Nature Book Series: Smart Animal Production and Springer Nature Encyclopedia of Smart Agricultural Technologies.