prof.dr. I (Ioannis) Athanasiadis

Ioannis N. Athanasiadis is Professor and Chair of Artificial Intelligence at Wageningen University and Research. His research aims to advance artificial intelligence to address global challenges, related to food security, agriculture and ecology. He is a proponent of use-inspired fundamental research. Driven by the complexities of natural systems, Ioannis aspires to further the field of artificial intelligence and contribute towards a more sustainable and food-secure future. Together with his resaerch team, students and stakeholders, Ioannis develops artificial intelligence systems tailored to help farmers, policymakers, and stakeholders make better-informed decisions, manage risks and improve our understanding of complex system interactions with data-driven discoveries.

Ioannis is/was the co-principal investigator for several major European and national grants related artificial intelligence in agriculture and ecology  (AgrifoodTEF, PHENET, SmartDroplets, LTER-LIFE, CYBELE, Dragon). He also co-leads the WUR research theme on data-driven discoveries in a changing climate, that employs AI and data science to better understand and respond to the impacts of climate change. 

He leads AgML, the research group of the Agricultural Model Intercomparison and Improvement Project (AgMIP) focused on the interface of machine learning with agricultural modelling, by sharing reference datasets and research protocols.

Ioannis is a Fellow of the International Environmental Modelling and Software Society. He served for more than 15 years as an editor of the journal Environmental Modelling and Software, was the inaugural managing editor of the journal Socio-Environmental Systems Modelling, and has long experience in reviewing for primary AI venues (NeurIPS, ICML, ICLR, IEEE WIC).