Future Young Leaders Program

Roberta Marcoli, is dedicated to advancing the sustainability and profitability in the aquaculture industry through her work as a Postdoctoral Researcher at James Cook University as a scientist specialising in molecular biology and bioinformatics application. Her interest in the marine environment began in childhood in a small Italian fishing village and Roberta has a PhD in aquaculture and molecular biology. She’s worked in Italy, French Polynesia, New Zealand on Australia with a focus on sustainable aquaculture practices. Roberta’s also passionate about science communication, believing that it’s important to simplify complex scientific concepts so that all members of the community can understand the role of aquaculture in securing our oceans and our future.

SamLambert is the co-founder of zenGate, a blockchain technology business focused on empowering under-served commodity producers around the world. zenGate’s flagship product, Palmyra.app, is an aggregate marketplace solution for commodity producers and buyers, with scalable modules such as traceability, payments, and compliance. Sam studied economics and statistics at the Australian National University under Prof. Bob Gregory and began his career at international management consulting firm, Oliver W
yman. Raised in Sydney and now living in Japan, his focus is on providing equal access to opportunities and innovation for agribusiness and communities, no matter their size or location around the world.

Natalie Bell is the founder of Hylo Ag - a start-up aiming to provide a recycling pathway for livestock ear tags. She has a passion for the meat and livestock industry with an Agricultural Science degree with Honours in Livestock Production from Sydney University. Natalie’s career in the meat industry began with business development and key account manager roles in a vertically integrated meat business. Living on a sheep property at Holbrook in southern NSW, she has a sound understanding of the business model intricacies of being the farmer, processor, and marketer.

Guy Coleman is currently involved in research and development of autonomous weed control platforms. He developed OpenWeedLocator (OWL), an open-source, DIY weed detector for precision weed control. The University of Sydney PhD student is currently a guest researcher at the University of Copenhagen and as a Fullbright Scholar he studied plant growth-stage recognition at Texas A&M University. Guy’s worked with worked with farmers and engineers developing methods for real-time weed recognition, including Weed-AI, providing open-source access to image data for algorithm training. He's also served as Vice-Chair of the Ag Institute Australia, founded AgriEducate and has been a member of the AgriFutures Ignite Panel.

As a postdoctoral researcher with CSIRO, Australia’s national science agency’, Katia Taylor is overseeing a project examining the influence of tillage, nutrient amendments, and fungicides on microbe-driven the conversion of crop residues into soil organic carbon. She’s spent more than five years working in agriculture-related research as part of her undergraduate and PhD degrees at the Australian National University, also carrying out part of her postgraduate study at the University of Zurich. Katia’s committed to improving the resilience and sustainability of farming systems to withstand the impacts of a changing climate and to adapt to meet the needs of consumers.