Governance

Our Governance team, the Board members and Management Team, navigates Agri-EPI towards a sustainable future, accelerating the adoption of farm technology and innovation.

Executive Team

Our Executive Team draws on their national and international expertise, including extensive work in novel agricultural technology and innovation, research and development, government policy and the commercialisation of scientifically viable patents and business opportunities.

Contact our Executive Team

Dave Ross

Chief Executive Officer

Dave provides leadership and strategic direction to the development of the Centre in its emerging role, both nationally and internationally. He is a trained engineer, with 26 years’ experience of agri-technology in both the cropping and livestock sectors, encompassing a broad range of technology areas. He has been involved in the R&D of a number of novel and patented developments across the agricultural production sectors. Some of these have been fully commercialised and he has assisted with spin-out and new company formations.

Kirk Siderman-Wolter

Chief Operating Officer

Kirk has an extensive career ranging from work in central government to social enterprise and innovation companies. He has worked from audit to board level in the private, public and charities sectors all round the world, and has held posts with the Ministry of Justice, BEIS, the Home Office and the Foreign & Commonwealth Office. A Chartered Accountant, he also holds an MBA from the London Business School and is a Fellow of the Royal Society for Arts. His undergraduate degree is from the University of Guelph, Canada’s largest agricultural university.

Lisa Williams

Director of Business Development

Lisa has vast experience in the agri-food sector, having spent over 20 years working in the industry in a variety of different roles. More recently, Lisa headed the agri-food division of Promar International, with a focus on client engagement, business development, project delivery, implementing systems, PR and team management. Lisa has dealt with the project management and direction of a range of assignments in the fresh and processed horticultural sectors, as well as the pork, dairy, poultry and beef sectors with clients from across the supply chain operators, government departments, levy bodies/organisations in both the UK and globally.

Shamal Mohammed

Chief Technical Officer

Dr Shamal Mohammed is a leading expert in digital agriculture with a strong passion for transforming the industry by developing novel and practical solutions, using smart technologies, to help farmers and producers optimise food production and minimise adverse environmental impacts. Shamal worked for Origin Enterprise PLC, AHDB and, more recently, Agrii where he was a Head of Integrated Crop Technology and later Regional Manager for soil, nutrition and precision agriculture. Currently, being based in Cranfield, Shamal works with Agri-EPI partners to lead the journey to innovate technology in the agriculture sector by providing farmers and producers with a wide range of scientifically robust and commercially viable capabilities.

Non-executive Board members

Together with our Management Team, our board navigates Agri-EPI Centre towards a sustainable future. By deepening long-term opportunities that advance our mission to accelerate the adoption of precision agriculture and engineering technologies, to boost productivity and increase farm efficiency worldwide.

Vince Gillingham

Chair

Vince is a Founding Director of Agri-EPI and also founded and commercialised well known precision farming and digital farming brands in the UK, Europe and Africa.

He has a continued passion for developing agri-tech businesses globally. At the heart of this is advancing agricultural research within the agri-tech sector. Integrated science and technology is at the heart of this objective.

He has delivered wide reaching commercial success in the agri-tech sector from a number of collaborative projects including Innovate UK funded Agri-tech projects and European Space Agency projects.

A skill set that bridges the gap between academic and commercial ventures is at the heart of his value to the industry, delivered as an independent consultant and non-executive director.

Willie Thomson

Vice Chair

Willie Thomson is Harbro’s technical director, responsible for their agri-technology and R&D strategies. With over 30 years of experience in animal nutrition and husbandry. He has been heavily involved with the development and application of technical advances for many species in the monitoring of health and nutrition

Willie is also a director of Innovent Technology, which was created in 2001, primarily to assist with addressing the needs of the Scottish agriculture industry and to commercialise a patented animal health product that he invented, Kling-on Blue.

He has vast experience in the agricultural industry, and in bringing products to market successfully. He has experience in writing and filing patents and is aware of IP methodologies. He has heavily been involved the development of the Agri-EPI Centre since its inception in 2014/15 and was Chair of its Board between 2015 and 2020.

Matt Dobbs

Matt is Practice Leader with Westpoint Farm Vets. In 2001 he was awarded a Nuffield scholarship to look at future models for veterinary practice and spent the year working at UC Davies (California), Colorado State University and Cornell University. In 2004, after completing the RCVS certificate in Cattle Health and Production, Matt left the RVC to set up Westpoint Vets, a specialist Farm animal practice group. In 2010 Matt was awarded the Bullock award for innovation in agriculture, in 2011 the Queens award for services to agriculture and in 2013 completed a law degree.

As CEO, Matt grew the business through acquisition and organic growth to become the UK’s leading mixed vet group, covering all farm species, lab (Biobest), farm data/technology (Kingshay) and companion animals. In late 2015 he led the split of Westpoint, creating vetPartners (companion focus) and Origin (farm focus), remaining with the Origin group to create a unique production animal group. The group continued to grow and in 2018 Origin was acquired by vetPartners, as part of the sale of the August Equity vet portfolios businesses to BC Partners.

Nevil Lee

Nevil is an independent financial consultant. He qualified as a chartered accountant with KPMG, worked in Investment banking with Deutsche Bank and spent a period working with an international poverty relief charity, mainly in the Indian sub-continent.

Nevil also worked as a finance and channel director in the world’s largest furniture manufacturer, Steelcase, where during 2015-16 he led a turnaround of the company’s Paris operations. Nevil was Agri-EPI’s Centre’s Director of Finance between 2016 and 2019. He obtained an MBA at Warwick Business School.