Ruth Kerry is an Associate Professor of the Department of Geography at the Brigham Young University, USA. She completed her Ph.D. at the University of Reading, UK in 2004. From 2017 to 2022, she was an Affiliate Assistant Professor at Auburn University. She was an Official Visiting Scholar at the University of Cambridge. She is a Fellow of the Royal Geographical Society (RGS), a Member of the Association of American Geographers (AAG), and a Member of the British Society of Soil Science (BSSS). Her research interests are spatial analysis; geostatistical analysis; soil science; precision agriculture; sensed data; and environmental geography.

Ben Ingram received a BEng in Electronic Engineering and Computer Science (2003) and a Ph.D. in Neural Computing (2008) from Aston University, Birmingham, where he worked under the supervision of David Evans and Dan Cornford on techniques for applying geostatistics to big data. After his Ph.D., he continued to work with Dan Cornford and worked as a post-doc on a European FP7 project—Intamap. In 2009, he was appointed as an assistant professor in the Computer Science department of Universidad de Talca, Chile, where he worked for 8 years, including 3 years as the Head of Department. In 2017, he moved back to the UK where he took up a research position at Cranfield University in the Soil and Agrifood Institute working with Guy Kirk and Ron Corstanje. His current work includes developing generic methods for assessing the extent to which Asian rice supplies are contaminated with toxic metals, particularly arsenic and cadmium, and assessing the potential of technologies to mitigate risks based on agronomic management and rice genotype differences.

Dr. Hamed Abbas joined ARS in 1990 after finishing his Ph.D. in 1987 and post-doctoral work at the University of Minnesota, and he has been the lead scientist in the aflatoxin control project since 1999. The focus of his research is the reduction in corn contamination with mycotoxins (especially aflatoxins and fumonisins) by studying agricultural practices, varietal resistance, fungal ecology, and biological control. He developed a sensitive, inexpensive method to identify aflatoxigenicity in Aspergillus isolates. Currently, he is cooperating with an industrial partner (Aspire) to further develop and refine applications of insects for mycotoxin mitigation within feed production. He has more than 35 years of post-graduate research experience and he has authored or co-authored 300 publications (220 reviewed research journal articles, 50 review articles/book chapters) and over 200 abstracts. He has received eight patents for his work on mycoherbicides and aflatoxin control. He has been recognized worldwide as an authority on mycotoxin contamination in the field, and in food, and for his work on mycoherbicides.

Gene Ahlborn is an associate professor of the College of Life Sciences at the Brigham Young University, USA. He received a master’s degree from Brigham Young University in 2001. He completed his Ph.D. in Food Safety and Toxicology at the North Carolina State University (2005). He is a committee/council member of the Institute of Food Technologists. He is a member of the Society of Toxicology. His research interests are food substitutes and arsenic effects on gene expression.