Dr. Yiorgos Gadanakis is an Associate Professor of Agricultural Business Management in the School of Agriculture, Policy and Development and a visiting academic at the Mediterranean Agronomic Institute of Chania. His research focuses on the sustainable intensification of food production systems, agricultural theory of change, and innovation and entrepreneurship in agri-food systems. He has been involved in several EU-funded programs, most recently RECAP and ENVISION, which aimed to develop tools engaging farmers and stakeholders in an Earth Observation data-based platform. These tools facilitate decision-making, land management, and remote cross-compliance monitoring to support sustainable agricultural systems. In both projects, he coordinated the co-production of web-based services by developing a novel framework combining extreme programming and design thinking.

He has collaborated extensively with stakeholders across the agri-food sector, from farmers to policymakers and governmental bodies. Over the past five years, he has secured over £1 million in funding as a principal investigator or co-investigator from various research initiatives, including UKRI, Horizon Europe, EIT Food, and DEFRA. He serves as the principal investigator for the University of Reading in the Transforming UK Food Systems project, specifically “The UK Sustainable King Prawn Project.” This project focuses on Recirculating Aquaculture Systems powered by renewable energy technologies and incorporates circular economic principles at every stage. It aims to position the UK as a global leader in sustainable, land-based seafood production and to provide innovative diversification opportunities for UK agriculture.

Additionally, he is the co-investigator for the Climate-Smart Dairy project, which assesses challenges, innovations, and solutions for a more sustainable UK dairy sector. His work in this project focuses on identifying smart-dairy technologies and practices that are supported by consumers and farmers and deemed financially feasible by the UK government. His further research includes productivity and technical efficiency analysis of agricultural production systems and promoting technology adoption.

He also leads the Innovation and Entrepreneurship spine of the EIT Food Solutions program and the Food Solutions Challenge at the University of Reading. These initiatives bring together multi-disciplinary teams to tackle real-life industry challenges and develop innovative solutions for the food system. As part of these activities, he fosters strong relationships with companies in the agri-food sector across the EU, supporting the development of an innovative and sustainable agri-food ecosystem.

As an academic supervisor, he has supervised over five PhD students on the topics of land reform, labor economics, agricultural production efficiency, livestock sustainability, and improving farm sustainability performance.