Prof James Sweeney (University of Limerick; Statistics; Soil; male; FWCI – 1.46) is a professor in department of mathematics & statistics in University of Limerick. James is a statistician with critical expertise in modelling the complex nature of spatio-temporally referenced data, common in many applications in agriculture including grass growth modelling and soil mapping amongst others. His expertise will greatly add to the centres capabilities in this space and his ongoing research work in modelling air and water pollution and endemic/epidemic disease transmission greatly increase the range and scope of projects that can be conceived and investigated. He has an international profile as reflected in his roles as an invited Associate Editor of the Journal of the Royal Statistical Society Series C and a reviewer for several of the prominent journals in the field of Statistics. He is in receipt of substantial funding from Research Ireland, through the Challenges programme in particular, and is also a funded investigator in the Research Ireland funded Insight Research Centre. He has extensive industry collaboration experience across the finance, technology, pharmaceuticals and agriculture space and his experience will be valuable in building relationships with potential Industry partners as well as identifying novel insights and approaches to solving unmet stakeholder needs. Experts without prior agri-food domain knowledge have the proven benefit of bringing with them novel insights and approaches to solving unmet stakeholder needs and problem statements in agri-food.