Professor Louise Manning: Resilience and “leagility” across the dairy foods chain. Louise started her research career with a PhD in Global Food Production since when she has worked for over 40 years undertaking consultancy and research to inform strategy, policy, business productivity and personal development in the agri-food sector. She was Professor of Sustainable Agri-food Systems at the Lincoln Institute for Agri-food Technology, University of Lincoln from 2022-2025. Louise is Managing Director of a strategic consultancy business, LJM Associates Ltd, a director of her family farming business and also provides ongoing strategic and governance support to businesses and governments. She has a strong background in applied research and promoting innovation in food safety and quality, food-related crime, food governance, business ethics and supply chain digitalisation as well as social and corporate responsibility. She has published over 150 peer-reviewed papers and also written and edited multiple books and book chapters, as well as being active on social media (X – @foodsafetyljm).

Dr Emma-Jane Murray: Economic benefits of health resilience. Emma-Jane is a researcher specialising in bovine infectious diseases at Teagasc Moorepark in Ireland. Her interests include animal health economics, One Health, and veterinary epidemiology. These interests were further developed during her recent PhD at the University College Dublin School of Veterinary Medicine & Global Burden of Animal Diseases programme, which focused on the burden of cattle diseases in Ireland. Emma-Jane holds an MSc in Veterinary Epidemiology (Royal Veterinary College and London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine). Her interdisciplinary background spans from livestock science to public health, having served as a governor on university boards and contributed to public health surveillance in Ireland during the peak of the Covid-19 pandemic.

Dr. Morteza Hosseini Ghaffari: Early-life feeding and calf resilience: Linking nutrition, behaviour and predictive data. Morteza is a scientist at the Research Institute of Farm Animal Biology (FBN), Dummersdorf, Germany. He received his MSc from Isfahan University of Technology in 2008 and his PhD in Animal Science from Ferdowsi University of Mashhad (Iran) in 2013. After a postdoctoral fellowship at the University of Alberta, Canada (2016–2017), he joined the University of Bonn in November 2017. In 2024, he completed his habilitation on “Deep Phenotyping of Dairy Cows”, focusing on OMICS and biomarker-based approaches to investigate metabolic responses and adaptive mechanisms in dairy cattle during the transition period. His research focuses on the integration of high-throughput techniques to assess physiological adaptation in dairy cattle. He has authored more than 180 peer-reviewed publications and utilizes advanced OMICS technologies to develop precise nutritional strategies to improve dairy cattle health, performance and resilience. In his presentation he will discuss the role of early-life nutrition, specifically colostrum and milk feeding management, in calf health and resilience. In addition, he will explore the potential of automated milk feeders and behavioural data to predict disease onset and improve proactive management strategies that support dairy calf growth and health.

Professor Andrea Doeschl-Wilson: Understanding and breeding for resilience traits    Andrea is Professor of Animal Disease Genetics and Modelling at the Roslin Institute at the University of Edinburgh in the UK. She leads a research group that develops and applies statistical and mathematical models to study how the genetic make-up of animals together with non-genetic factors influence the spread of infectious diseases and harmful behaviour in farm animals.  Their research encompasses all major farm animal species (cows, sheep, pigs, chicken, fish). Andrea and her team are particularly interested in exploring the integration of novel technologies into improved prediction models with the ultimate aim to enhance animals’ resilience and health for more sustainable livestock production.

Andrea currently leads the Roslin Institute Strategic Programme on the Prevention and Control of Infectious Diseases. She also leads and contributes to various large scale international research consortia with collaborators from both academia and industry across Europe, North America, Australia and Africa.

Dr Graham McAuliffe:  Enviro-nutritional assessment methods, data limitations and potential opportunities for the dairy sector.  Graham is Reader in Environmental Impact Assessments of Food Systems at Harper Adams University. His research centres on advancing the methodological frontiers of life cycle assessment (LCA), with a particular focus on integrating nutritional quality into environmental metrics to deliver more policy‑relevant and scientifically robust insights. Over more than a decade, he has contributed to the development of transparent, reproducible approaches that address uncertainty, improve indicator specificity, and strengthen the interpretability of sustainability assessments. Dr McAuliffe has collaborated widely with international organisations, NGOs, and research councils, and his work has informed debates on the environmental and nutritional sustainability of food systems, with significant implications for the dairy sector and beyond.

The Conference Dinner will be held on the Monday evening (24th November), 7.30 for 8.00 in the Castlehill Room of the Scotch Whisky Experience on the Royal Mile. The three-course gourmet dinner will be complemented by your choice of red or white wine followed by freshly-ground coffee and Scottish Fudge. A vegetarian option is available. After the meal there will be a fireside chat session with Prof Tom McNeilly, Scientific Director of the Moredun Institute and Chief Executive of the Moredun Foundation. The evening is priced at a heavily-discounted £25. Advance booking is required, and is done through the Registration portal (choose the “Monday” option and scroll down to find the Dinner Ticket).