Maria Devant
Maria Devant has a solid background in R&D in Swine and Ruminant Production. Over the last 15 years, she has focused her scientific career in beef production improving feed efficiency and enhancing economic returns while minimising environmental impact, improving animal welfare, and offering high-quality products to the consumers through research and innovation. To achieve this goal the creation and leadership of the Beef Innovation Table has been crucial, in this annual meeting 12 representatives of the whole production chain propose and set priorities of the research topics, and in this forum we also connect them the new societal demands that are coming and that they need to be prepared (like antibiotic user reduction). Her expertise is nutrition and management, and in case a topic needs the expertise in another area we find collaboration within IRTA or outside IRTA to solve it. In the last 5 years she have focused my research in 2 topics: strategies to improve calf vitality and modulation of behavior and stress through nutrition (gut-brain axis). As a result of this work, I have published more than 49 peer-reviewed articles in major international journals (Quartile 1). These publications have a total of 1119 citations yielding an H-index of 21. Besides, in the last 10 years I have presented a total of 80 communications and posters in scientific congresses. Along with this research activity she is head of the Ruminant Production Program (since 2016) and Animal Nutrition Program (since 2021) and member of the Strategic and Scientific Committee at IRTA (since 2019), in these positions where team science needs to be successful, two skills like i) openness to different perspectives and being able to conceptualize the big picture, ii) and being able to uniting people around a common mission are needed.
Assumpció Antón
Researcher at the Food and Agricultural Research Institute (IRTA). First, she conducted research as agronomist and the last 20 years conducting projects in the area of Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) and agriculture. She has been teaching LCA and supervising bachelors, masters, and doctoral thesis students in the field of LCA applied to the agricultural sector for 15 years. She was associated professor in the Chemical Engineering Department at University Rovira Virgili(2006-2016) and the Agrifood Engineering and Biotechnology Department at the University Polytechnical de Catalunya (2020-2022). She has been involved as expert in different international initiatives (UNEP-LCI, LEAP-FAO, PAS2020, ECOINVENT, EC-TAB-AWG). Assumpció’s area of expertise is the development and application of LCA methodology in agriculture. She focuses her research on the improvement of agricultural inventories and the development of Life Cycle Impact Assessment methods related to agricultural processes, i.e., carbon footprint, land use, water consumption, eutrophication and toxicity due to pesticides use. Final goal of her work is the improvement of agricultural systems from an environmental point of view.
Marçal Verdú
Marçal Verdú Piqué has a degree in Veterinary Medicine (2010) and a PhD in Animal Production (2015) from the Autonomous University of Barcelona (UAB). From 2016 to the present, he has been in charge of Animal Nutrition R&D at his multi-species pilot farm, in the Department of Animal Feed and Production of bonÀrea Agrupa. He has experience in various projects and research studies in the field of animal nutrition and production.
Lourdes Llonch
Lourdes Llonch Fernández holds a degree in Veterinary Medicine (2015) and a PhD in Animal Production (2021) from the Autonomous University of Barcelona (UAB). Since 2021, she has been working at IRTA as a postdoctoral researcher in the Ruminant Production Program. His line of research focuses on beef cattle, specifically in the application of nutritional and management strategies in order to improve the productive efficiency of animals, their health and welfare, as well as the sustainability of the sector, to through different projects such as demonstration activities (within the 01.02.01 operation of technology transfer of the rural development program of Catalonia 2014-2020) and operational groups.
Sonia Martí
Dr. Sonia Marti is a Research Scientist in the Department of Ruminant Production at Institut de Recerca i Tenologia Agroalimentaries de Catalunya, Spain. After completing the BAgrE, MSc and PhD in animal production (2012), Sonia completed an NSERC Postdoctoral fellowship at Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada in Lethbridge (2013-2016) and the University of Calgary, Faculty of Veterinary Medicine (2016-2018) conducting studies on painful procedures, the evaluation of chronic stress, as well as beef cattle lameness and transportation. Dr. Marti’s current research focuses on evaluating management practices of unweaned dairy calves reared for meat with a focus on health, productivity, welfare, and pre-slaughter factors to improve welfare and meat quality
