Jesse Bussard is the Executive Director of the Craft Maltsters Guild. Previous to her work with the Guild, Jesse worked as an independent writer for over a decade covering topics related to craft beer, agriculture, and conservation. Additionally, during her previous tenure living in Montana, she co-founded and organized some of the state's best craft beer events including Bozeman Craft Beer Week, Beer Maven: A Women’s Beer Education Series, the Montana Brewers Conference, and Montana Funk Fest. Jesse is currently a member of Pink Boots Society and the North American Guild of Beer Writers. Outside of work, she enjoys reading, exploring the outdoors, and spending time with her faithful sidekick and Boxer dog, Budro. They currently reside in central Pennsylvania.

David Cook is AB InBev Professor in Brewing Science at the University of Nottingham, UK and has more than 20 years of experience conducting research and teaching relating to brewing, analytical food chemistry and flavour technology.  

David is Course Director for the University of Nottingham’s innovative e-learning based Masters courses in Brewing Science, which are designed to be studied part-time as Continuing Professional Development courses for brewers and allied professionals.  

The Cook group specialises in applied research and interacts extensively with the malting and brewing sectors. Current research activity focuses on malting science and technology, beer flavour formation and stability and the reduction of primary energy usage in malting and brewing. Sustainable bioprocessing of raw materials and co-products is a further interest of the group.   

Professor Ruth Dill-Macky works in the Department of Plant Pathology at the University of Minnesota, USA. Her research program, focused on the diseases of cereal crops, is internationally recognized for its work on Fusarium head blight. Ruth’s research program also includes work on bacterial leaf streak of wheat and barley, net blotch of barley, loose smut of oat, the root rots of cereals and she has maintained an interest in the rusts that she studied as a PhD student in Australia. Dr. Dill-Macky’s interests in plant pathology are in the management of plant diseases through the deployment of host resistance, cultural control practices and plant disease epidemiology.

Ruth currently serves as the Researcher Co-Chair of the United States Wheat and Barley Scab Initiative. In this role she leads a national consortium of research scientists, producers and industry representatives that aims to reduce the impact of FHB on wheat and barley.

Dr Megan Edwards is an Australian animal nutrition consultant based in Hoi An, Vietnam. Megan completed her PhD at the University of New England, Australia, in the area of weaner pig nutrition and has worked in the industry for 15 years. She has had the pleasure of working with pig producers, integrators, feed millers, premix companies, feed additive companies and research groups. Megan has worked throughout Asia, Oceania, Europe and Latin America during her career where she has provided feed formulation, technical support, research advice, as well as joining seminars and training workshops as an invited speaker. Megan has a keen interest in immuno-nutrition and functional nutrients.

Terry is a non-executive director, currently chair of Grains Australia limited. Previous roles include chair of GRDC, The Australian Export Grains Innovation Center, The Australian Livestock Export Corporation and Albany Port Authority. He has also served time as a Director on BA and Wheat Quality Australia. Terry retains several Industry related positions and until 2018 was a grain and livestock producer in southern WA

Professor Mike Gidley is Director of the Centre for Nutrition and Food Sciences (CNAFS) in the Queensland Alliance for Agriculture and Food Innovation at The University of Queensland, Australia. Research themes within CNAFS include:

‘Smart Selections’ (how to identify the right combinations of raw materials and processing to deliver consumer-preferred foods), ‘Naturally Nutritious’ (maximising the intrinsic nutritional properties of agricultural products in foods and ingredients) and ‘Uniquely Australian’ (identifying and validating opportunities for elite products from foods and ingredients that can only have come from Australia).

Prof Gidley’s own research is focussed on structure - function - nutrition relationships in plant-based foods and ingredients. This has led to the detailed characterisation of starch and dietary fibre digestion and fermentation both in vitro and in vivo, with the understanding generated leading to opportunities for optimising nutritional value of foods and feeds.

Dr. Patrick Hayes is a Professor at Oregon State University.  His research team explores the many forms and uses of barley. This presentation will focus on the ongoing quest for understanding the contributions of barley (via malt) to beer flavor. There will be relevant digressions into malting barley variety development; winter hardiness and growth habit; quantitative disease resistance; research malting; and the prospects of barley finally saying farewell to hulls – after 10,000 years.

Professor Chengdao Li is Director of Western Crop Genetics Alliance, a joint research centre of Murdoch University and Western Australia Department of Primary Industries and Regional Development. He got his PhD from the University of Adelaide and has worked as a barley breeder and geneticist in Australia, Canada and China for 30 years. He is one of breeders for Baudin, Hamelin, Vlamingh, Roe, Hannan, Lockyer and Litmus and has led several national barley research projects, including the phenology, heat tolerance, acid soil tolerance and grain defect projects. He is a key contributor to complete the barley reference genome and pan genome sequences and is the Winner of Australian Farmer of the year 2019 award for excellent in research. His current research focuses on crop genomics breeding.  

Rob is a shareholder with Delta Agribusiness and has worked as a consultant/agronomist in the Moree district with broadacre cropping and cotton since 1988. Over that time Rob has built extensive knowledge of the linkages between crop nutrition, crop phenology, soil water dynamics, plant pathology and how these factors all interact to maximise grain production, mitigate crop losses and derive sustainable farming systems. Additionally, Rob jointly founded Crown Analytical Services in 2008, a business that provides a service assisting farmers their advisors with crop disease management. CAS is the preferred service agent for PreDictaB North. Their most recent project has been to use molecular diagnostics (soil DNA) to monitor, map and manage Verticillium and black root rot in cotton.

Other positions held:

Board Chairman: Wheat Research Foundation (trustees of IA Watson Grains Research farm at Narrabri)

Board Chairman: Rimanui Farms Australia

Former Board member and Chairman, Northern Grower Alliance, a GRDC funded farming research body.

Vocational Awards:

Sydney University Science faculty: 2019 Alumni Award for Professional Achievement

Matthew is a Research Group Leader at the Sainsbury Laboratory. Matthew’s career started at the University of California, Riverside, USA where he studied Pure Mathematics and Physics (BSc), working as a programmer and molecular biologist in the laboratory of Prof. Timothy Close. Matthew’s conducted his PhD work at Iowa State University, Ames, Iowa, with his work focusing on gene expression and regulation during the interaction of barley with different obligate biotrophic fungal pathogens. Matthew joined as a post-doctoral scientist at the Sainsbury Laboratory in 2010 in the newly formed 2Blades Group under the supervision of Dr. Eric Ward. Matthew became a group leader in 2014 with a focus on understanding immunity to non-adapted pathogens of grasses. Matthew has a long track record working on genomics and immunity in grass species, including wheat (Triticum aestivum), barley (Hordeum vulgare) and Brachypodium distachyon.

Barley Markets Manager, AEGIC

Mary Raynes is responsible for AEGIC’s barley market insights program.

The program aims to identify the barley quality attributes preferred by customers of Australian barley.  The information gathered from the program assists the Australian grains industry to breed, grow and supply grain that meets the quality requirements of consumers.

Ms Raynes has extensive whole-of-supply chain experience for cereals and pulses crops across the Australian dryland grain production industry and their suitability for export markets.

Her wealth of knowledge and understanding of the Australian grains industry from production to customer requirements has been built from working for Grain Trade Australia, Pulse Australia and the Victorian Government.

Ms Raynes has, with other barley industry stakeholders, contributed to improving malting barley access to India, Latin and Central America and feed barley into Philippines, Viet Nam and Thailand.  

Dr Megan Sheehy is the Executive Chairperson (CEO) for Barley Australia (BA). Megan is responsible for the ongoing functions, operations, promotion, and development of Barley Australia (BA) as the peak industry body for the barley industry in Australia.  Megan is also currently the Immediate Past Chair of the Institute of Brewing and Distilling (IBD) Asia Pacific Section Board of Management, after recently completing 2 years in the role of Chair.

Dr Sheehy holds a Ph.D. degree from the University of New South Wales and has held various operational and technical roles at Lion and Joe White Maltings over her career prior to joining Barley Australia.

 Megan has also been closely involved with the planning and management of the Internationally renowned Australian Barley Technical Symposium (ABTS) for the past two and upcoming symposia, holding the role of Symposia Secretary for the 2017 Hobart Symposium and serving as a member of the organising committee for the recent 2019 and the upcoming 2022 Symposia.

Anne Stephens: 30 years’ experience in the brewing industry, mainly in global commercial strategy for SABMiller and then ABInbev.  Now pursuing a PhD in consumer behaviour.  I grew up on a farm in South Africa, with a geneticist father who bred new tomato varieties, so I know a little of your world.  But now live in the UK, with 5 children, one husband and a large garden to keep me busy.

Doug studied agriculture at the University of Sydney and then completed post-doctoral studies at Michigan State University and the University of Adelaide involved with starch metabolism and the impact of malt quality on beer filtration, respectively. 

Doug then joined Coopers original maltings, Adelaide Malting Company, in 2000 as Quality Manager.  The business transitioned to Joe White Maltings, where Doug progressed to General Manager Technical, undertaking a range of duties over 15 years, including production, research and development and responsibility for technical aspects of the business. 

Doug moved to Coopers Brewery in 2014 for the new maltings project, and now with the maltings complete, he is responsible for all aspects of procurement, operations and sales and marketing.

Dr Stewart was made Fellow of the Institute of Brewing and Distilling in 2015.

John Stuart has been associated with Australia’s barley industry since 1980 where he started as a maltster with Barrett Burston Malting Co. In 1988 he commenced a quality management role in domestic and export barley marketing which he continues to do with his current employer GrainCorp Operations Ltd. John holds a TAFE diploma in Handling, Storage and Inspection of Grain, joined the Asia Pacific section of the Institute of Brewing and Distilling in 1988 and was a prior board director of Barley Australia for many years. John represents industry on various Australian grains and oilseeds industry committees, and has travelled extensively throughout China, Japan and SE Asia during his long career, liaising with barley end-users.

Simon has run Hop Products Australia's hop breeding and new cultivar development program since 2007. Since then HPA have launched several new hop cultivars targeted for strong flavour impact in craft beer.  Simon trained at the University of Tasmania, majoring in biochemistry before going on to postgraduate studies in molecular and quantitative genetics. Hop production, and hop breeding draws on skills in perennial horticulture, plant physiology, analytical chemistry, flavour science, brewing science and genetics.  Simon currently manages the agronomic services group at HPA, with oversight of laboratory capability, plant breeding and cultivar development, sustainability initiatives, and horticultural practices.