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Agri-EPI welcomes new Academic Partnerships Manager, Wendy Hewitson

Agri-EPI Centre has welcomed on board a new Academic Partnerships Manager to their team, Wendy Hewitson.

Wendy has a diverse background, with twenty years experience within the retail sector, followed by a further twelve years at Barclays, where she spent the last five as the AgriTech programme manager for Barclays Eagle Labs.

Wendy was one of the founders of the AgriTech Industry vertical for Barclays Eagle Labs, where she created and oversaw the delivery of many successful accelerators, events and industry focussed support material and programmes. She helped support much of the UK’s entrepreneurial ecosystem throughout all areas of the food supply chain.

Wendy is passionate and highly effective at enabling knowledge transfer, sharing collaboration and growth opportunities with both agritech/agrifood innovators and key industry players within the UK.

Wendy said:

‘’I’m so excited to join Agri-EPI Centre. I’m hoping to help strengthen a collegiate approach between the expertise within academia, the innovative ecosystem, and the breadth of expertise that Agri-EPI centre provides to support the transition and transformation of the agricultural supply chain towards net zero.

The agricultural sector and food supply chain is an ever-changing environment, impacted daily by climatic, political, and societal pressures. It has such a breadth of un-tapped opportunities and capabilities. Having seen how technology, innovation, and collaboration has grown over the last five years I really see this as an opportunity to continue to broaden engagement and collaboration both nationally and globally.”

Kayleigh Breen joins Agri-EPI Centre as Agricultural Laboratory Technician

Agri-EPI has recently hired an Agricultural Laboratory Technician to join their technical team. Kayleigh Breen comes from an academic background in Applied Bioscience and Forensics and previously worked in science-based roles for over 5 years. These were based largely in the pharmaceutical industry at companies such as AMRI and Sartorius and extended to Covid-19 testing during the pandemic.

Kayleigh’s role is helping to develop the current laboratory and technical facilities which are based in Agri-EPI’s Northern Agri-Tech Hub using existing instrumentation or bringing in new equipment where required. Some instrumentation already in place includes the Voice200 Syft Mass Spectrometer capable of highly sensitive, selective and non-discriminatory semi/ volatile organic compound analysis of air, water and soil samples, the TA.XT Plus 100C Texture Analyser capable of analysing various food, soil and animal feed samples for things such as consistency and shearing resistance, and also the NIRFlex N-500 FT-NIR Spectrometer used to analyse food, beverage and animal feed samples for moisture, macronutrients and protein content.

Her aim is to provide in-house and on-site testing of various sample types depending on project and partner requirements, such as soil, water and air samples, extending to animal products such as wool or faecal sample analysis.

Kayleigh said:

“This will be a substantial undertaking, but I am looking forward to the challenge and am keen to transform the lab into something that will actively benefit the business and projects moving forward.”