Robert is the lead UAV pilot and senior data scientist within NIAB’s Data Sciences Team. He is an expert in the use of remote sensing tool, including drones, to assess a variety of crops under field conditions. The Data Sciences Team is combining phenotyping, genotyping and environmental data, to developing open-source hardware and software to address yield, quality, and disease related challenges for UK’s key agricultural and horticultural crops such as wheat, brassicas, strawberry and orchard fruits.
Robert obtained a PhD in molecular biology and phenotyping from the University of Nottingham and Rothamsted Research. Following his PhD Robert worked at Rothamsted focusing on remote sensing methods to analyse grain quality and the nitrogen content of milled wheat grain and straw. At NIAB Robert originally worked on high-throughput phenotyping of large scale field trials as part of the GplusE genomic selection project.