Dr Ioannis Droutsas

Profile

I am a Research Fellow in the Climate Impacts group of the University of Leeds. My work focuses primarily on the impact of climate variability and change on crop productivity and grain quality. I am particularly interested in understanding and modelling the interaction between crops and their surrounding environment, as well as how different management practices modify this relationship. Prior to my current role, I finished my PhD at the University of Leeds studying the combined effect of climate and ozone pollution on wheat productivity and grain quality. 

Research interests

I work primarily on the development and use of process-based crop models and machine learning methods for the estimation of the effect of environmental stress conditions (such as heat and drought) on crop growth, development and yield. During my PhD, I developed a new crop modelling methodology, SEMAC (Simultaneous Equation Modelling for Annual Crops), which provides with a robust crop model structure and improved internal consistency, thus leading to increased model performance. SEMAC was implemented in the GLAM crop model (General Large Area Model for annual crops), resulting in a new model version GLAM-Parti (GLAM-Partitioning). Recently, GLAM-Parti was further extended to incorporate machine learning algorithms for the estimation of crop growth, development and biomass partitioning at daily time step. 

Qualifications

• PhD in Climate and Atmospheric Science, University of Leeds
• MSc in Environment and Development, National Technical University of Athens, Greece
• MEng in Environmental Engineering, Technical University of Crete, Greece