Speakers

Dr. J. Scott Angle received his BS and MS at the University of Maryland in Agronomy and Soil Science, respectively. He obtained his PhD from the University of Missouri with an emphasis on Soil Microbiology.  Angle worked for 24 years as a Professor of Soil Science and administrator (Director of the Maryland Agricultural Experiment Station and Maryland Cooperative Extension) at the University of Maryland. His early work focused on the study of losses of nutrients from agro-ecosystems, and their impact on the Chesapeake Bay.  He also studied the impact of heavy metals on the food chain with the goal of protecting our food supply from these harmful elements. Later he concentrated his studies on phytoremediation, the use of plants for extraction of heavy metals from soil. In 2005, he moved to Athens, Georgia, where he served as Dean and Director of the College of Agricultural and Environmental Sciences at the University of Georgia for 10 years.  Following his time at UGA, Dr. Angle was President and CEO of the International Fertilizer Development Center.  At IFDC he oversaw a staff of over 800 and coordinated development projects in diverse regions of the world. IFDC provides solutions to alleviate global hunger and poverty through the promotion of economic development and self-sufficiency.   From 2018 to 2020 Angle was the third permanent director of the National Institute of Agriculture.  NIFA is the primary extramural agricultural funding agency in the US.  With a budget of nearly $2B, he supported research, teaching and extension at our national land grant institutions.  In July of 2020, Angle was appointed Senior Vice President of the Institute of Food and Agriculture at the University of Florida.  As one of the nations premier agricultural and natural resources programs, Angle leads a diverse group supporting agriculture, forestry, families, fisheries and natural lands.  He is a fellow in the American Association for the Advancement of Sciences (AAAS), the  American Society of Agronomy and the Soil Science Society of America. He is also a Fulbright Fellow having worked at the Rothamsted (Research) Experimental Station, in the UK.

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Chemical Engineer from the University of Murcia with over 18 years of experience in environmental and agri-food testing laboratories. Currently serves as Technical Manager  at Fitosoil Laboratorios S.L., part of the Cotecna Group—a leading laboratory in the fertilizer and biostimulant sector. His responsibilities include laboratory workflow organization, analytical method development and validation, and quality management. He also works as a technical auditor for environmental laboratories under ISO 17025 for the Spanish National Accreditation Body (ENAC). 

Brian is a Principal Engineer with Equity Engineering. He is also the active Chair of the API/ASME Joint Committee on Fitness-For-Service, API 579-1/ASME FFS-1 (API 579) and an ex-officio member of the ASME Board on Pressure Technology Codes & Standards (ASME BPTCS). Brian brings experience as both an owner-user and consultant providing engineering support and training to the refining, oil and gas, fertilizer, pulp & paper, food processing, chemical, petrochemical, and other industries. The primary focus of his experience has been in the design, maintenance/repair, failure analysis, and fitness-for-service activities for fixed equipment.

Prior to joining Equity Engineering, Brian worked as a Maintenance Engineer at a petroleum refinery and as a Reliability Engineer at an inorganic chemical facility. His duties included engineering technical support with inspection tasks, failure root cause analyses, fitness-for-service assessments, and general maintenance activities during plant turnarounds, unplanned shutdowns, and routine day-to-day operations. Brian also initiated and justified capital improvements to eliminate plant bottle necks and maximize plant profitability through reliability assessment techniques (including Six Sigma). His broad experience with all stages in the full lifecycle of fixed equipment allows Brian to be a valuable consulting resource.

Adam Crosswhite has 15+ years of experience as a Process Engineer working on process engineering design, scale up, and process/product development, most of which has been within the fertilizer industry. He has a bachelor’s degree in Chemical Engineering from the University of Alabama in Huntsville and is a Licensed Professional Engineer in the State of Alabama. Currently, he is the Director of Engineering and Pilot Plant at IFDC, where he manages all aspects of the pilot plant services offered by IFDC.

Chemical Engineer from the University of Almería with over 15 years of professional experience, currently serving as Managing Director at Fitosoil Laboratorios SL, part of the Cotecna Group—a company specializing in food safety. 
His work focuses on process optimization and continuous improvement, ensuring analytical efficiency and maximizing productivity. He is deeply committed to fostering collaboration, innovation, and team synergies—key drivers of success in the sector. 

Paresh Haribhakti, Managing Director of TCR Advanced Engineering, is a globally recognized metallurgist whose formative professional years were deeply rooted in the fertilizer industry—building rare insight into ammonia, urea, nitric acid, phosphoric acid, and high-corrosion operating environments. With over three decades of experience, he has led more than 9,500 failure investigations and 500+ Fitness-for-Service (FFS) assignments worldwide across fertilizer, refining, petrochemical, and energy sectors. A pioneer of in-situ metallography, Paresh bridges failure investigation with digital transformation through AiOM™ and ARTiS™, enabling fertilizer plants to convert degradation data into predictive intelligence, continuous monitoring, and proactive asset reliability. He is the author of an ASM International book and a contributor to the ASM Handbook.

Graduated in Chemical Engineering in 1994 at Politecnico di Milano, Italy. With specialisation in Chemical Plants Designs.

After an initial experience as process engineer, in 1998 joined Cannon Artes, a Company involved with Water & Waste Water Treatment technologies, where he supported the creation of the Engineering Division and the expansion through technology development and acquisitions.

With more than 25 years of experience with Cannon Artes, as proposal manager initially and commercial director since 2009, Alessio helped promoting Cannon Artes’ leading role as a well-recognized global player in the industrial water treatment market in particular in the energy sector, upstream and downstream.

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John is the Global Group Vice President for Process Industries which includes Energy, Chemicals, Consumer Packaged Goods, and Life Sciences at Siemens Digital Industries Software. 

John has over 30 years of global industry experience. He has founded multiple energy and technology start-ups and led global business development in China, Romania, Panama, and the USA. He has developed clinical trial management systems for monoclonal antibody R&D. He has managed greenfield and brownfield projects with oil and mining companies in Canada and China and implemented pipeline asset integrity programs in the USA and Mexico. 

John holds patents for pipe-lining technology and serves as an executive member of the US-based Cleantech Alliance and the Program Advisory Committee for the Government of Canada National Research Council Construction Sector Digitalization and Productivity Program. He has also served on numerous boards of technology firms and university R&D associations. 

John graduated from Texas A&M University with a bachelor’s in civil engineering and completed executive studies at MIT and INSEAD. 

Dr. Isaac Rukundo has extensive expertise in near infrared (NIR) spectroscopy and multivariate data analysis, with a focus on quality assessment in agricultural and industrial processes. He holds a Ph.D. in Food Science and Technology (with a minor in Statistics) from the University of Nebraska–Lincoln, and has published on NIR applications in feed, forage, and compositional analysis. 

Currently serving as the NIR Technical & Application Specialist at BUCHI Corporation, Dr. Rukundo supports the implementation of NIR solutions across diverse sectors, including agriculture, food production, feed manufacturing, and fertilizer processing.  Rukundo supports industries in implementing NIR spectroscopy for quality control, efficiency gains, and data-driven decision-making—ranging from food and feed to fertilizer manufacturing.  

At this conference, Dr. Rukundo will highlight how NIR spectroscopy enables rapid and non-destructive real-time analysis of critical fertilizer properties. This technology can be implemented for quality control, efficiency gains, and data-driven decision-making throughout the production cycle