Circular Agrifood

Marcel Zevenbergen obtained his MSc from Delft University of Technology in 2005 and a PhD from the same university in 2009. Afterwards, he joined imec the Netherlands where he developed novel sensor platforms for various applications, in close collaboration with industrial partners. Current position is program manager both at imec and OnePlanet Research Center leading the advanced sensor development for applications ranging from precision agriculture, water quality and bioreactor monitoring.

Goran Obradovic has been with Sojaprotein since 1999, starting from sales on Serbian market, switching to export in 2001. He was handling sales in Central-Eastern European countries, and gradually spreading over all of Europe, throughout 2001 – 2012. Currently he is in charge of the food products sales division, comprising 4 sales managers and a team of inside sales support, each handling various regional markets.

Harry Smit is a long-tenured senior analyst with Rabobank’s research division, supporting the bank’s mission by providing sector and company views, as well as knowledge, expertise and insight about global Food & Agribusiness (“F&A”) market trends.

Harry’s expertise encapsulates all major economic themes related to farming, including competitiveness of various agricultural models, technology, soil, water, climate, biodiversity and policy themes such as Brexit and the CAP. He has extensive experience in primary agriculture in both Europe and other major markets gained through a lifelong career in the F&A industry.

Prior to joining RaboResearch in 2006, Harry was a credit analyst at Rabobank and before that, research analyst in Rabo’s Economics Research department. Before working for Rabobank, he was employed by the Dutch Ministry of Agriculture for six years, working mainly in the Ministry’s Department for International Affairs, where he was focused on various aspects of the European Common Agricultural Policy.

Harry holds a masters degree in Agricultural Economics from the Agricultural University in Wageningen.  Harry grew up on a mixed dairy and hog farm in the Netherlands.

Renzo Akkerman is an associate professor in Operations Research and Logistics at Wageningen University. Earlier, he was a professor in Operations Management and Technology at the Technical University of Munich and an associate professor in Operations Management at the Technical University of Denmark. He graduated from the University of Groningen with a PhD in Operations Management and an MSc in Econometrics and Operations Research. His (often interdisciplinary) research focuses on supply chain management in food and bio-based industries. Specific topics range from efficient resource utilization in food processing to the design and planning of food supply chains considering food-specific characteristics (e.g. product quality and sustainability). In the last few years, he also started focusing on supply chain challenges in related to the transition to the circular economy. He has widely published on these topics and was and is involved in various externally funded research projects funded by Europe’s Horizon 2020 programme as well as different national funding agencies (on topics such as sustainability in agri-food supply chains, the integration of water reuse in production management, and the role of logistics in a circular economy).

Xu Zhang obtained his Ph.D. title in department of Biomedical Engineering and Physics in Amsterdam UMC. He soon joined OnePlanet Researcher Center as a biomedical researcher. Meanwhile, he participated the 2^nd Autonomous Greenhouse challenge organized by Wageningen University & Research as a member of Team AiCU, and eventually won the silver medal. He now continues working on novel sensing techniques and smart algorithms towards the realization of autonomous greenhouse.

Wouter Bruins (36) is a Dutch Biologist and founder/director of In Ovo, a biotech company, which aims to improve both animal welfare and efficiency in poultry production. He is a visiting scientist of the Institute of Biology Leiden, helps to foster entrepreneurship at Leiden University, ambassador for the Leiden tech transfer office and member of the MIT subsidy committee of the province of South-Holland. He has won a number of business awards, was named number 1 of the 101 nerds/technologists list of the Netherlands in 2015, number 16 of the top 100 most sustainability impactful Dutch people and is one of the top 50 young talents of the Dutch Financial Times.

Henk Gerards is at OnePlanet Research Center responsible for R&D cooperation with and building an ecosystems of SME’s active in the domains Precision Health, Nutrition & Behavior and Precision Agriculture & Food Processing. Thus enabling Advanced and Circular solutions for Agriculture, Food, Environment and Health by the development and application of Sensing & Digital Technologies.

Martijn works as a sustainability specialist at Lidl Netherlands, focusing on climate and circularity; from direct operations to products and packaging. Martijn studied biology in Wageningen, and afterwards worked with the UN as Dutch Youth Representative for Sustainable Development. He has been selected for the DJ00 again this year, the top 100 most stustainable young changemakers in the Netherlands.

Since my MSc in Crop Physiology at WUR I had a passion for the Agri & Food industry. I worked with breeders, producers, consultants and retailers to improve the supply chain. My vision is a sustainable, transparent and fair way of growing our food. In my current role we have powerful tools available to make a positive change: imec technology with WUR and Radboud domain knowledge. The adoption of new digital technologies in Food & Agri enables us to change the way we organise our production chains to the most sustainable way possible. With OnePlanet Research Centre we help by developing digital twins for the individual parts of the supply chain and integrating the knowledge back in the chain. Towards an Agri revolution 4.0.

Carlos is the founder and Managing Director of Greencovery. Greencovery focuses on upcycling food ingredients (e.g organic acids and amino acids) from companies side-streams. With an own-developed separation technology, the goal is to accelerate the market implementation of circular solutions. His role at Greencovery is to identify the applications of our technology in which we can have the highest impact. He catalyzes the connections between the different markets to extract the maximal potential from each side-stream.

His dream is to contribute to a waste-free future!

In 2001, after graduating from the Erasmus University Rotterdam with a degree in business, Marjolein started working in the energy sector. Initially in the traditional oil and gas industry followed by jobs in renewable energy and (later) sustainable materials. Over the years, she has worked in business development and management roles (MT), product, process and / or system innovation being the common thread.

From 2015 onwards Marjolein has worked on ecosystem innovation for the benefit of societal transitions (e.g. linear -> circular economy). In 2020 she started her role as Managing Director of Foodvalley NL, a wonderful organisation with dedicated professionals who work at facilitating the transition of the global food system with the aim to make healthy food accessible and affordable for everyone. This role is the perfect mix of her past experience, competencies and personal beliefs.

Paula Rijkens is Innovation Manager Circular AgriFood at Foodvalley NL, where her task is to stimulate the transition to a sustainable, circular food system; one without waste and with a good business model for all links in the chain. With many years of experience in sales and purchasing at multinationals and SMEs, Paula has been a project leader in education (HAS University of Applied Sciences) and government (Province of North Brabant) guiding innovation projects in the fields of residual flow evaluation, food processing and protein transition.

Paula Rijkens is a Foodvalley Champions jury member for the Circular AgriFood theme.