Speakers

Speech Title : From Data Silos to Trustworthy Insight: PlantGraph and the Rise of the Private, Local AI Co-Scientist for Agricultural Biotechnology

Dr. Jian-Feng Mao is Associate Professor of Plant Physiology and Genomics at Umeå University and the Umeå Plant Science Centre (UPSC). His research spans plant and tree multi-omics, large-scale genome assembly — including conifer giga-genomes — allopolyploid subgenome phasing, and AI-driven tools for genomics. He has published landmark chromosome-scale plant and tree genomes in leading international journals. Dr. Mao conceived and leads PlantGraph, a knowledge-graph and AI platform that delivers trustworthy, source-backed reasoning for plant and food biotechnology, now expanding toward crop, agricultural, and forestry applications and a privacy-preserving, on-premises AI co-scientist for industry.

Speech Title : Good Agricultural Practices and Safety of Food

Prof. Dr. Mohammad Kamil is the Director General of Lotus Holistic Healthcare Institute, Abu Dhabi, UAE, and an internationally renowned expert in medicinal plants, traditional medicine, phytopharmaceutical chemistry, and natural products. He holds a Ph.D. and D.Sc., is a Chartered Chemist (C.Chem.), and a Fellow of the Royal Society of Chemistry (FRSC), UK. With over 50 years of academic and research experience, he has authored more than 850 scientific publications, 7 books, and supervised 35 Ph.D. scholars. He has served as a WHO expert on traditional medicine and has received numerous prestigious honors, including the Sheikh Zayed International TCAM Award in Herbal Research and the UAE Golden Visa for his outstanding scientific contributions.