Integrating anaerobic digestion technologies in the agriculture industry
Keynote speaker: Jennifer Green

Jennifer Green is the Executive Director of the Canadian Biogas Association. She works directly on behalf of the membership, with industry leaders and biogas stakeholders to create awareness and expand opportunities for biogas by advocating for best practices, policies and programs that fit industry needs. She is passionate about biogas and continues to direct her enthusiasm and energy to the betterment and growth of the sector.

Facilitators: Maude Gendron and Stéphane Godbout

The symposium is structured in four 90-minute sessions around the following themes:

1. Buildings and waste management
2. Emerging issues
3. Livestock systems of the future
4. Climate emergency

The main objective is to provide essential information on the most recent innovations from Quebec and elsewhere with national and international experts in animal production to meet the challenges of the entire industry, in particular, for producing milk, pork and eggs.

The information from this symposium will be gathered, synthesized and disseminated to reach producers, advisers, engineers and other stakeholders in the sector in Quebec. The post-congress dissemination plan will allow engineers to design more efficient and sustainable breeding systems, thus increasing the competitiveness of Quebec animal production.

How hydrological modelling can help solving emerging water quality and quantity issues.

Keynote speaker: Dr. Prasad Daggupati

Dr. Daggupati is an Assistant Professor (Water Resource Engineering) in the School of Engineering at the University of Guelph, Canada. He received his BS degree (2012) from the College of Agricultural Engineering in India, Masters (2007) and Ph.D. (2012) degrees from Kansas State University in USA. He worked as a Post-Doctoral Research Associate and Assistant Research Scientist at Texas A&M University, USA before joining the University of Guelph. Dr. Daggupati’s major contributions to research and practical applications are towards solving emerging water quality and quantity issues using GIS, hydrological modeling, machine learning, and field experimentation at various scales (e.g. field scale, watershed scale) across multiple countries around the world. He has authored or co-authored 50+ peer-reviewed journal articles and presented 75+ presentations on usage and application of hydrological and water quality models. 

He is currently a division editor (Soil and Water) in the Canadian Biosystems Engineering Journal and an associate editor in Transactions of ASABE and Applied Engineering in Agriculture. He was awarded Postdoc of the year award at SWAT conference in 2015 and Young Agricultural Engineer of the Year Award in 2016 from the Texas American Society of Agricultural and Biological Engineers. He was also part of the Standards Development Award received during the 2018 Annual ASABE conference for developing a new standard (ASABE EP621) which sets guidelines for calibrating, validating and evaluating hydrological and water quality models. He is currently involved in several local, federal and international funded projects which provide sustainable solutions for complex watershed-scale management problems under changing climate and landuse. 

For more information on abstract submission and deadlines for this session, see the Author Guidelines.

Keynote speaker : Suzanne Allaire, Ph.D. GECA Environnement

Suzanne Allaire has been working in environmental science for more than 27 years. She has collaborated with a wide range of industries, private companies, government agencies and research institutions to reduce the impact of humans on the environment by adding value to residues, protecting soil and improving carbon balances; the last 13 years being mainly on biochar and pyrolysis of residues. She has worked as a full professor at Laval University for 16 years, then started her own business.

As owner of GECA Environnement, she works as an expert on biochar, pyrolysis products and their markets along with optimisation of their properties for their best usages. She supports municipalities, companies and organizations in various aspects of pyrolysis projects such as selection of technology, market development, R&D, project management, etc.

She is a board member of the International Biochar Initiative, the most important organisation about biochar in the world. She has written over 500 publications related to the environment for various countries and types of audiences.

For more information on abstract submission and deadlines for this session, see the Author Guidelines.