Biosystems engineer, Professor Shane Ward, has been appointed as the first Director of the Soil and Water Management Centre at Harper Adams University.
Professor Ward, who specialises in integrating engineering with life sciences, will also take up the newly-created role of Professor of Soil and Water at the university in Shropshire.
Having developed collaborative research programmes with industry and led several national and EU-funded projects, Professor Ward is well established within research and innovation.
He has been responsible for developing a number of centres of excellence at University College Dublin, including the Peat Technology Centre, the Bioresources Research Centre and BioE - which brings innovative new concepts from university research to the market.
Commenting on his new appointment, Professor Ward, previously Head of the School of Agriculture Food Science and Veterinary Medicine at University College Dublin, said: "Soil is the base resource for the agri-food and bioresource sector, and is fundamental to the sustainability of agri-food and bioresource production systems.
"Harper Adams University is ideally positioned to play a leading role in the national effort to address the requirements of modern agricultural production systems in respect to soil and water; and how to manage our soils within the context of ongoing extreme weather events.
"The range of expertise within the university spans the complete spectrum, from soils to farm-gate and beyond; key areas include agricultural engineering, soil and vehicle interaction, soil management, precision agriculture, crop science, bio-energy, animal husbandry, agricultural economics and 'smart system' applied to agri-food and bioresource production systems."
"The university has a 550 ha production and research farm, which enables it to evaluate and apply research at farm level. The Soil and Water Management Centre will facilitate staff at Harper Adams to undertake world-class research while also interacting with industry and the wider community.
"This is a flagship university-industry collaboration effort providing a national hub for the sector and facilitates the delivery of innovation on a scale necessary to address the national challenges in this domain.
"The UK can become a world leader in soil-water management systems, which is hugely important in the context of the increasing demands for high quality food, recent bad weather events and the need to reduce flooding risk and waterways pollution."
The Soil and Water Management Centre aims to act as a national source of information and expertise, a forum for establishing improvement priorities and a focus for training and applied research.
