The International Phytobiomes Conference 2026 will bring together a broad community of U.S. and international scientists from the public and private sector as well as agricultural stakeholders.
The Conference program will cover a wide range of topics related to phytobiomes and the list of speakers & panelists below reflects the interdisciplinarity of phytobiome science.
Plenary Speakers
Trevor Charles
University of Waterloo, CA
Trevor Charles is Professor of Biology at the University of Waterloo. Trained as a microbiologist and bacterial geneticist, he holds a B.Sc. in Microbiology from the University of British Columbia, a Ph.D. in Molecular Biology from McMaster University, and completed postdoctoral training at the University of Washington. He held a faculty position at McGill University before joining the University of Waterloo, where his research group works at the intersection of microbial genomics, plant-microbe interactions, and environmental surveillance.
Current research activity spans beneficial bacteria in field and controlled environment agriculture, functional metagenomics and novel gene discovery, bacterial genome engineering for the conversion of food waste to bioplastics, and wastewater-based pathogen surveillance, all situated within a circular bioeconomy framework.
Trevor has been actively involved in translating research from his lab into commercial products and services, and as Founder and Executive Director of the Lanterna Black Innovation Hub, is deeply committed to increasing the participation of Black youth in STEM, innovation, and entrepreneurship.
Talk Title: From Field to Greenhouse to Barn: Exploring the Phytobiome Potential Across Ontario’s Diverse Agricultural Systems
Kwang-Hyung Kim
Seoul National University, KR
Kwang-Hyung Kim is a Professor at Seoul National University, South Korea, jointly affiliated with the Department of Agricultural Biotechnology and the Interdisciplinary Program in Agricultural and Forest Meteorology. His research focuses on agro-climatic analytics, plant disease epidemiology, and climate-informed decision support systems for agriculture. Kim’s research integrates machine learning, explainable AI, remote sensing, and process-based modeling to improve crop yield prediction, plant disease forecasting, and agricultural risk assessment under changing climate conditions. His work emphasizes bridging advanced analytical approaches with field-level applicability and operational decision-making in real-world agricultural systems.
With over a decade of international consulting experience, he has collaborated with organizations including FAO, UNDP, CIAT, ADB, and KOICA to support the development of national agro-climatic services and digital agriculture systems across developing countries. His broader research vision centers on multidisciplinary and systems-based approaches that connect climate, crops, and agricultural management for resilient and sustainable food production.
Talk Title: Machine Learning Meets the Field: Agro-Climatic Analytics for a Changing Climate
Danica Lombardozzi
Colorado State University & National Center for Atmospheric Research, US
Danica Lombardozzi is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Ecosystem Science and Sustainability at Colorado State University and a Project Scientist in the Climate and Global Dynamics Laboratory at the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR). Her research integrates ecological observations with global-scale modeling to better understand how terrestrial ecosystems respond to and influence environmental change.
Her work has shown how ground-level ozone reduces ecosystem carbon storage, projected future shifts in food availability due to climate change, and evaluated agricultural practices that mitigate climate impacts while supporting food security. Lombardozzi leads the development of the agriculture module in the Community Land Model and co-founded the National Ozone Garden Network, where she directs community science efforts.
She earned a BA in Environmental Science from Colorado College and a PhD in Ecology and Evolutionary Biology from Cornell University.
Talk Title: Terrestrial Ecosystem Responses and Feedbacks to Changing Climate
Invited Speakers
Bridget Emmett
UK Centre for Ecology & Hydrology, UK
Bridget Emmett is a Principal Scientist at UKCEH and leads the inter-disciplinary and multi-partner Environment and Rural Affairs Monitoring and Modelling Programme(ERAMMP) funded by the Welsh Government since 2012 and is PI for a other projects which require a inter-disiplinary approach and a focus on policy evaluation and development. Bridget is a Trustee and recent Past President of the British Ecological Society and is a Member of the EU Mission Board for ‘A Soil Deal for Europe’.
Bridget was formerly UKCEH’s Science Area Head for Soils and Land Use (SLU), leading and managing more than 120 research staff and 40 postgraduate students across three UKCEH sites. Her research is often as the lead for projects requiring the coordination of a large number of partners to improve integration across different disciplines and sectors from catchment/landscape to national scale to improve the evidence base and support national policy development and outcome reporting in the areas of e.g. soil health, ecosystem services, agri-environment schemes and natural capital.
Bridget was awarded Officer of the Order of the British Empire (OBE) for her Services to Soil and Ecosystem Sciences in 2023 and the Marsh Award for her Climate Change Research by the British Ecological Society in 2016. She has published over 184 ISI articles, has a H index of 66 (Scopus) and has a publication record with over 17,000 citations. She sits on a wide range of number of advisory boards both national and international for governments and research organisations. She served as the Specialist Adviser for the UK Parliamentary Inquiry into Soil Health in 2016.
Draft Talk Title: Soil Health, Agri-environment Schemes and Policy Evaluation and Development
David Sherman
Inria (National Institute for Research in Digital Science and Technology), FR
David James Sherman is a research director with Inria, the French National Institute for Computer Science and Technology, where he leads a multidisciplinary Inria-INRAE team that builds computational tools for digital microbial ecology. He is scientific lead of the MISTIC flagship project of the French PEPR Agroecology and ICT program. Educated at the University of Chicago (SB’86 Mathematics, SM’89 PhD’94 Computer Science) in compilation and logic, he developed formal methods for industrial systems reliability before turning in 1999 to modeling complex biological systems and conducting large-scale comparative genomics. His personal focus is reasoning over large knowledge bases to support biological decision making. Sherman was an Associate Professor at Bordeaux INP from 1996-2007 before joining Inria.
Talk Title: Computational Microbial Ecology in Aid of Agricultural Transition and Adaptation to Climate Risks
Shengjing Shi
Bioeconomy Science Institute, NZ
Shengjing Shi is a Senior Scientist in the Resilient Agriculture Group at the Bioeconomy Science Institute, New Zealand. Her work focuses on soil microbiome function, plant-microbe interactions and their responses to climate change, with a strong emphasis on translating microbiome science into sustainable agricultural solutions.
Shi is dedicated to advancing beneficial microorganisms to improve plant performance and agricultural resilience. Working closely with industry partners and farmers, she has led multidisciplinary, multi-institutional research programs that bring together research institutes, universities, and industry to address key challenges in sustainable food production. She currently co-leads the multi-year program Plants and Microbiomes of the Future, which aims to strengthen the resilience of forage-based agricultural systems under climate change through the development and deployment of novel forage cultivars and their associated beneficial microbiomes. Within this program, her team integrates microbiome science, plant genetics, systems biology, and phenomics to better understand and optimize plant–microbe partnerships under environmental stress.
Draft Talk Title: A Roadmap for Plant-microbiome Breeding to Enhance Plant Stress Tolerance
Panelists
Industry Roundtable Discussion
