dr. RJMG (Richard) Harrison

Dr Harrison is the Managing Director of the Plant Sciences Group, comprising of approximately 1400 staff split across 19 chair groups in Wageningen University and 7 Business Units within Wageningen Research. In the Netherlands he is a member of the Top Team Tuinbouw en Uitgangsmaterialen, as well as providing strategic oversight of several programme boards for large regional and national initiatives on behalf of Wageningen U&R.  
Previously he was an executive Director at NIAB (UK) with overall responsibility for NIAB’s portfolio of arable genetics, pathology, biotechnology, data science and crop characterisation. Alongside that he led NIAB’s contribution to the Crop Science Centre, the alliance between the University of Cambridge and NIAB, designed to bridge the gap between discovery science and societal impact. This alliance has received significant philanthropic support and rapidly established its position in the national innovation landscape. Prior to his role in Cambridge, he worked at East Malling as head of genetics, where he specialised in horticultural genetics and genomics of fruit crops.  
Dr Harrison has a PhD in evolutionary systems biology. His research has always focussed at the intersection of molecular biology, statistical genetics and modelling. His group have worked to understand the evolution and genetic basis of complex traits, such as interactions between plants and microbes. Outputs have included scientific knowledge, tools, techniques and products to underpin the sustainable development of the agricultural, horticultural and food industries, using both breeding and biotechnology solutions. His group were among the first to implement gene editing techniques in key horticultural crops and in fungi used for alternative protein production. Through collaborative work with industrial partners, he and his team have delivered disease resistance traits into multiple commercial breeding programmes, as well as having initiated new public-private breeding programmes funded by global partners.  
Following a Nuffield farming scholarship in 2018, looking to the future of sustainable crop production, his research interests broadened to developing approaches to tackle the complex challenges required for the transition to sustainable food systems. This included spearheading several initiatives while at NIAB, such as the development of multiscale models for digital twinning of production systems and developing a large multidisciplinary doctoral training programme focusing on systems approaches to sustainable crop production, which brought together SME’s, charities, multinational food businesses and a network of nine universities to train the next generation of crop scientists. 
While in the UK Dr Harrison has been a member of the UKRI-BBSRC Agri-food Strategic Advisory Panel, the KTN Plant Science advisory board, the NFU Net Zero Science Advisory Board and the BBSRC pool of experts. He has contributed to multiple government consultations, most recently in the areas of gene editing and horitculture. He has held visiting academic status at both the University of Reading and the University of Kent.