David Blakemore

Nutreco

David joined Nutreco in 2022 as CEO of Trouw Nutrition, the company’s livestock feed business line, and member of Nutreco’s Management Board. With effect from June 1, 2024, David Blakemore will change his position and move into the role of CEO of Nutreco.

David has over 30 years of experience nurturing customer relationships, driving the commercial and innovation agendas and guiding operations and has established a strong track record of delivering results and building strong teams.

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Remco van Reenen

Trouw Nutrition

Remco van Reenen joined Nutreco 13 years ago and has over 25 years of experience in animal health and nutrition. He held different marketing, sales and management positions during his career. He started at Nutreco as sales manager feed additives for North and Latin America. He then became Global Product Manager for Nutreco´s piglet feeds.

He later moved to Spain to become the General Manager of Trouw Nutrition Spain. 3 years ago, Remco became the Managing Director of Nutreco´s Business Unit Feed Additives. Remco holds an MSc in business economics from the Rotterdam School of Management.

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Dr. David Bravo

Nutreco

As Chief Science Officer (CScO) of Nutreco, David created and now leads Nutreco Exploration. This involves the strategy, building and leading the team and creating and managing the programs.

David has a strong track record of innovating in the feed industry, having served in a variety of positions including leadership ones in feed, premix and feed additive companies like Pancosma in Switzerland, In Vivo NSA in France and Land O’Lakes in the United States. David studied nutrition, molecular physiology and physiology at universities in France; he is also an alum of Harvard Business School. 

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Dr. Alex Obach

Skretting

Alex Obach has held the position of Director of Innovation at Skretting since July 2021 and is the head of Skretting Aquaculture Innovation (Skretting AI). Originally from Barcelona, Alex is a veterinarian with a Master in Aquaculture from the University of Girona (Spain) and a Ph.D. in fish pathology and immunology from the University of Western Brittany (France).

He started working at the Skretting Aquaculture Research Centre (ARC) in 1993 as a researcher, specializing in fish and shrimp health and nutrition. From May 2007 to July 2021, he was the Managing Director of Skretting ARC. He also served as a professor at the University of Barcelona (1995-1997) and worked as a technical director at Marine Harvest (2004-2007). Since June 2023, he has also been the president of the European Aquaculture Technology and Innovation Platform (EATiP), an organization dedicated to developing, supporting, and promoting technology and innovation in the aquaculture sector.

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Dr. Kathleen Crispi

Trouw Nutrition

Kathleen Crispi has eight years of experience working for Trouw Nutrition and is currently the Innovation Director for the North America livestock feed business unit. Kathleen held a National Quality Assurance and Regulatory Affairs Position for Canada as well as the Research and Laboratory Manager. She received her PhD in Immunogenetics from the Ontario Veterinary College at the University of Guelph and is passionate about developing innovative solutions to drive efficacy and profitability for livestock producers.

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Melchior de Bruin

Nutreco

Melchior has been Development & Deployment Manager within Nutreco Exploration since June of 2022. He joined Nutreco for the first time in 2021 as global programme manager on the Selko team.

Before that, Melchior worked in the field as a specialised veterinarian for poultry (and aquaculture) for almost eight years. During his time as practicing veterinarian, he was active as an international consultant for poultry, lecturer at two institutes and a project lead in field studies for pharmaceutical- and feed additive companies. Melchior holds a degree in veterinary medicine and public health from Utrecht University in the Netherlands.

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Dr. Jose Manuel de la Fuente

Trouw Nutrition 

Jose Manuel is Category Manager Health and Performance of Selko, the feed additive brand of Trouw Nutrition. He is managing a wide portfolio of products focused on gut health and performance, this also involves the development of new products & solutions to support our customer needs.

Jose Manuel has more than 30 years’ experience working with additives in the feed industry in different positions including technical management, business development, innovation manager or business manager in companies like Danisco, Dupont and Novus. Jose Manuel is agronomic engineer and has a PhD in Animal Nutrition from Politechnical University of Madrid, and he has also studied Business and Commercial Management at CCL (Belgium) and IESE (Spain).

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Yvonne van der Horst

Trouw Nutrition

Yvonne van der Horst holds a Master’s degree in Animal Sciences from Wageningen University in The Netherlands. After working in a commercial position in the Animal behaviour sector, Yvonne acquired the position of technical manager Feed in the organic acids industry. In 2013 she moved to Selko Feed Additives in the position of technical manager Preservation and Health being responsible for technical support of the organic acid based portfolio. In 2016 she became responsible for the Presan portfolio as the Global product manager.

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Dr. David Bravo

Nutreco

As Chief Science Officer (CScO) of Nutreco, David created and now leads Nutreco Exploration. This involves the strategy, building and leading the team and creating and managing the programs.

David has a strong track record of innovating in the feed industry, having served in a variety of positions including leadership ones in feed, premix and feed additive companies like Pancosma in Switzerland, In Vivo NSA in France and Land O’Lakes in the United States. David studied nutrition, molecular physiology and physiology at universities in France; he is also an alum of Harvard Business School. 

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Dr. Karin Berger

Nutreco

Karin is Phytotechnology Discovery Director at Nutreco Exploration. She and her team are based in Switzerland and engage in the discovery, exploration and characterization of plants and their compounds aiming to create solutions for the animal nutrition industry.

Karin has 25 years of experience and a broad background in botany, pharmacognosy, phytochemistry and pharmacology. Her professional career has been dedicated to research in medicinal plants and the development of plant-based products for diverse applications, including phytopharmaceuticals, food supplements, feed and feed additives, and cosmetics. Together with her husband, Bernd Büter, she started Vitaplant and later breeding botanicals international. She lectures at the University of Basel, the Bern University of Applied Sciences, and the Federal Institute of Technology (ETH) in Zürich. 

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Dr. Bernd Büter

Nutreco

Bernd is Director of Nutreco Exploration’s Phytotechnology Program and Centre of Medicinal Plant Solutions based in Switzerland.

He has more than 20 years of experience in plant breeding, plant variety registration, biotechnology, plant propagation, multi-location-multi-accession field trials and commercial cultivation. Before joining Nutreco, Bernd founded Vitaplant, dedicated to the rational use of medicinal plants and the production of the corresponding plant raw materials. He ran the company as CEO for 15 years, together with his wife Dr. Karin Berger.

During his education and professional career, Bernd lived and worked in various countries outside of Europe, such as India, Uzbekistan, Kenya, Bolivia, and the U.S. Bernd studied Biology  and Agronomy and then did a PhD in Plant Biotechnology at the Federal Institute of Technology (ETH) in Zürich.

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Dr. Emma Wall

Nutreco

Dr. Emma Wall has been Director of Development and Deployment for Phytotechnology within the Nutreco Exploration team since January 1, 2022.  Emma works directly with the business divisions to help bring novel, proprietary and relevant phytotechnologies to market.

Emma has been closely connected to agriculture since studying Animal Science at the University of Vermont. Then, after managing a herd of Jersey cows for two years, she went on to obtain her MS and PhD in Lactation Physiology followed by a post-doc in Immunology.  Emma has been working in the feed additive industry for over ten years, with expertise in the physiology of phytochemicals and how they impact animal health and production. With personal experience in both science and application, Emma has a passion for not only for bringing effective solutions with known mechanisms, but also understanding customer needs and challenges and optimizing ROI when it comes to technology deployment.  

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Dr. Yanming Han

Nutreco

Yanming has been Discovery Director Microtechnology within the Nutreco Exploration team since May 2022. He leads the discovery activities for Nutreco’s Microtechnology program, which involves everything from the upstream activities of defining and discovering new solutions, all the way through to the development of these solutions into products. 

Yanming joined Nutreco after completing a post-doctoral fellowship in molecular biotechnology, and spent over 20 years in Canada and the Netherlands, working across animal species and continents in feed additive and nutrition research and development, in close collaboration with leading academic groups all over the world. He holds a Ph.D. in animal nutrition with a focus on enzyme discovery and application.

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Lucia Luijben

Nutreco

Lucia Luijben has been Exploration Manager as part of the Nutreco Exploration team since January 1, 2022.  She drives the process of exploring new technology areas and partners for the development of novel feed additive solutions.

Lucia joined Nutreco in 2019 as Investment Associate in the NuFrontiers team. As part of NuFrontiers, she managed the team’s lead flow, identifying and evaluating technology companies in livestock and aquaculture that Nutreco could potentially partner up with and invest in.

Before joining Nutreco she worked on a biotech start-up and as a technology consultant. She obtained a master’s degree in Biotechnology from Wageningen University in the Netherlands. 

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Dr. Yanhong Liu

University of California (UC Davis)

Dr. Yanhong Liu is the Associate Professor of Animal Nutrition at the Department of Animal Science, College of Agricultural and Environmental Sciences, University of California, Davis (UC Davis). Before joining UC Davis, she worked with Dr. Hans H. Stein at University of Illinois as a postdoc from 2012 to 2015. Dr. Liu’s lab at UC Davis is cross-disciplinary, with a focus on deploying feed-based health technologies to improve animal health.

Her major research interest is to develop new dietary approaches that may promote disease resistance and performance of pigs by investigating the impacts of dietary supplements on gut physiology and immunity and systemic immunity of pigs, especially in post-weaned period. She is the recipient of the Hellman Fellowship Award (2019) and National Pork Board Swine Innovation Award (2012).

She received her BS in Biological Science and MS in Animal Science from China Agricultural University (China), and her PhD in Animal Nutrition from the University of Illinois, Champaign-Urbana. Liu’s research is partially funded by feed and feed additive companies.

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Dr. Mike Steele

University of Guelph

Dr. Michael Steele is a Professor at the University of Guelph, NSERC Industrial Research Chair in Dairy Cattle Nutrition and Executive member of the Canadian Society of Animal Science (CSAS). He completed his Ph.D. at the University of Guelph and worked for Nutreco Canada Agresearch for two years prior to returning to academia at the University of Alberta and Guelph as an NSERC Industrial Research Chair. He was recently awarded the CSAS Young Scientist Award, the Cargill Young Animal Nutritionist Award, the Lallemand Award for Excellence in Dairy Nutrition Research, the American Society of Animal Science Early Researcher Award and the ADSA Foundation Scholar Award. His current research focuses on the mechanisms that control gastrointestinal health and development in cattle and has published over 125 manuscripts in his career.

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Dr. Mieke Matthijs

Utrecht University

Mieke Matthijs is currently working as the head of the poultry division of population Health Science (PHS) at the veterinary faculty of the Utrecht University. She leads this section and is also strongly involved in teaching both Master and Bachelor students in Veterinary Science about poultry management and disease control.  Moreover she focuses on poultry research with special interest in infectious diseases, immunology, heat stress in poultry and on the global education of Veterinarians.

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Dr. Sangeeta Singh

Selko

Hailing from India, Sangeeta got her Masters and PhD in plant cell biology from Sweden, followed by an MBA in the USA. She has been working in the feed additive industry for over 20 years, exploiting her experience from across three continents.

She started her career at Novus International, focusing on business development (innovations), successfully launching several feed additives into the feed industry. She also worked in product management, managing the mineral category, which is one of the market leaders in the industry. In 2014, she joined Phibro Animal health, managing feed additives, such as Probiotics, mycotoxin binders, and several yeast derived products. She joined Selko, the feed additive brand of Trouw Nutrition, in 2017, managing several Nutritional Solutions products over the years and is based in the USA.

In her current role as the Category Director for Phytogenics, she is responsible for two streams of Selko's phytogenic product lines- Fytera and AOmix. She and her team strive to bring Phytogenics with unicity into the market that can positively impact animal producers, ensuring sustainable business now and in the future.

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Marlien de Kock

Selko

Marlien de Kock is the Global Technical Commercial Manager for Phytogenics for the Europe, Middle East, and Africa Region at Selko, the feed additive brand of Trouw Nutrition. She holds a BSc (Agric) Hons. degree from the University of Pretoria and an MSc (Agric) from the University of Stellenbosch. During the first 25 years of her career, she worked in the animal pharmaceutical industry at companies including Elanco Animal Health and Huvepharma.

Marlien has extensive experience in residue control and reduction of carryover of pharmaceuticals, especially antibiotics, in food for human consumption. She has compiled numerous antibiotic resistance profiles over the years and has been tracking antimicrobial resistance for more than 9 years.  In pursuit of more sustainable and holistic strategies to combat antimicrobial resistance and improve animal health and performance, Marlien decided to shift her career towards feed additives. In September 2021, she joined Trouw Nutrition South Africa as a Product Manager: Feed Additives, and in April 2023, she moved to the Selko to take on her current role.

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Gustavo Carneiro

Selko

Gustavo started at Selko in April 2023 as Technical Commercial Manager Phytogenic Solutions for Latin America. He is responsible for technical and commercial support, development of new businesses and opportunities in the phytogenics line for the regions of Mexico, Brazil and regional SCA.

Gustavo has a degree in zootechnics, with a specialisation in poultry and swine nutrition, and an MBA in marketing and management in agribusiness. In 2002 he began his career as a commercial technical manager in the area of ​​zootechnical additives, working with eubiotics, organic acids, and essential oils. During this period he had the opportunity to work in the Brazilian, Mexican and Latin markets in some companies such as: Nuscience, Farmabase and Novus, always with an emphasis on poultry and swine. 

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Dr. Ellen Hambrecht

Selko

Born and raised in Germany, Ellen obtained her M.Sc. in agricultural sciences at Hohenheim University. She joined Nutreco as a researcher in 1998 and worked on piglet and calf nutrition as well as preslaughter stress effects on pork quality, for which she earned a Ph.D. degree from Wageningen University in 2004. In 2008, Ellen became part of the Nutreco Quality Affairs team with focus on risk analysis and issue management as well as various sustainability projects. She was programme manager for AgriVision, Nutreco’s biannual business conference, for 3 consecutive editions from 2011 to 2015.

In 2015 she moved to Trouw Nutrition’s Global Marketing department as Poultry Portfolio Specialist and later joined the Selko team. She currently holds the position of Global Product Manager for the phytogenic solutions portfolio of Selko, the feed additive brand of Trouw Nutrition.

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