<div>As AI and cloud computing drive rapid growth in data centers across North America, demand for both energy and water resources is increasing dramatically. For greenhouse growers, this creates both challenges and opportunities. Data centers compete for critical infrastructure capacity, including power and water, yet they may also offer new opportunities through shared resources, waste heat utilization, and innovative public-private partnerships.</div>
<div>In this session, a range of industry stakeholders will explore how the CEA business model could be reshaped through smarter energy and water management, shared infrastructure, and strategic collaboration. Join the discussion to gain insights into one of the most important developments shaping the future of greenhouse production, resource efficiency, and long-term profitability.</div>
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Data Centers: Competition or opportunity for energy cost and water management?

Derek Smith is Executive Director of Resource Innovation Institute (RII), which develops strategies and tools to scale CEA as a solution to global food and resource challenges.  
Derek recently led RII’s partnership with Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory to advance the US Dept. of Energy-funded CEA Market Accelerator, which developed resources to improve the resource efficiency of greenhouse siting, construction, and operation.  
Derek is currently working with Virginia, North Dakota, and other states preparing public-private financing models to dramatically lower CapEx and OpEx for CEA operators, including through colocation with data centers.

Executive Director

Jonathan Grode serves as the U.S. Practice Director and Managing Partner for Green and Spiegel. Jonathan has worked continuously in the U.S. business immigration law field since 1999 and has amassed considerable experience obtaining nonimmigrant and immigrant visas for new company start-ups, professional workers, artists and entertainers, athletes, physicians, and scientific researchers. In addition, Jonathan has significant experience dealing with Department of Labor and Department of Homeland Security enforcement actions.

U.S. Practice Director and Managing Partner

David Einstandig is currently the Senior Vice President / General Counsel at Mastronardi Produce. With extensive legal experience across multiple sectors, Einstandig brings a wealth of experience, fresh perspectives, and expertise that will help the organization advocate for the future of indoor agriculture.

General Counsel

With over 30 years of professional experience, Bryan has served rural Virginia localities as a County Administrator and held other local government leadership positions. He also led Virginia's Region 2000 Partnership-Economic Development Council, which served the Lynchburg metropolitan region. He holds a Master of Urban and Regional Planning from Virginia Commonwealth University, a postgraduate Certificate in Litigation from the National Center for Paralegal Training, and a Bachelor of Arts in Political Science from Hampden-Sydney College. He is a member of the Mid-Atlantic Broadband Communities Corporation Board of Directors, Chair of the Council for Rural Virginia, member of the Virginia Rural Leadership Institute Advisory Committee, and member of the James Solomon Russell - Saint Paul's College Museum and Archives Advisory Board.

Economic and Community Development | Local Government Specialist

Director of Hydroponic Systems Mexico.
Specialist in greenhouse installations: hydroponics, pest control, water disinfection, engineering, and manufacturing. Projects developed throughout North America, as well as Hawaii, Malaysia, etc. Permanent connection with Europe through offices and a sales network.
Extensive experience in the design, manufacturing, and export of greenhouses and equipment for drainage collection and crop protection for fruits and vegetables.

Director

Laura Bautista Jalon’s work focuses on advancing crop production systems that simultaneously meet society’s demands and sustainability requirements. As Project Leader at WUR Greenhouse Horticulture, she facilitates collaboration between the Netherlands and North America to accelerate innovation in greenhouse horticulture and controlled environment agriculture. By connecting researchers, technology providers, growers, and policymakers, she promotes the exchange of knowledge, technologies, and best practices that improve productivity, sustainability, and resilience of food production systems.
Jalon’s career blends plant sciences, engineering, and agronomy, driven by a passion for technology and innovation in agriculture to enhance sustainability and profitability. With R&D and technical advice services, she is dedicated to transforming scientific insights and knowledge into practical solutions. Her core values emphasize teamwork and fostering inclusive work environments.

Regional Lead North America

Chris Higgins is the President and Co-Founder of Hort Americas, LLC (HortAmericas.com) a wholesale supply company servicing all aspects of the commercial horticultural industries. Over the past years Hort Americas has made a special effort to focus on horticultural lighting, hydroponics substrate and nutrient management making them one of the leading resources for greenhouse and vertically farmed vegetable growers. He is the owner of UrbanAgNews.com (online education content provider), was a founding partner of the International Congress on Controlled Environment Agriculture in Panama.

President and Co-Founder

Abby Prior is the Chief Commercial Officer at Cox Farms. She is responsible for accelerating business growth by strengthening retailer relationships and helping grocery shoppers understand the benefits of greenhouse-grown produce.
Prior to taking her current position in 2025, Abby spent the last decade working with Cox Farms' brand, BrightFarms, including three years as its Chief Commercial Officer, where she led the integration of the sales, marketing and R&D functions.
Abby built her career in brand management and sales at leading food manufacturers, Unilever and Bimbo Bakeries USA. She holds a bachelor's degree from Penn State University and a master's in business administration from the Temple Fox School of Business.
A recognized leader in the indoor agriculture industry, Abby often speaks at industry conferences and has served on produce boards. Based outside of Philadelphia, she enjoys attending her kids' sporting events and spending time in the Pennsylvania mountains and on the Chesapeake Bay.

Marketing Manager

Ryan Douglas advises owners, executives, and capital partners across CEA on what separates high-performing operations from expensive ones.
He brings 30 years of commercial horticulture experience, including 15 years in ornamentals, 10 years in cannabis, and most recently as general manager of one of the largest vegetable greenhouses in the northeastern US. That operating experience shapes the practical advice he delivers today.
Ryan is the author of From Seed to Success, The First Five Decisions, and Presence Is a Strategy. He has published more than 100 articles and hosts Under Glass, a weekly video series exploring the operational realities most greenhouse businesses never talk about.
Ryan has presented at major industry conferences and the United Nations on greenhouse production, operational excellence, and sustainable food systems.

Founder

Dr. Chieri Kubota is a distinguished professor in the College of Food, Agricultural and Environmental Sciences of The Ohio State University. She also serves as the Director of Ohio Controlled Environment Agriculture Center, which include 30 academic members and 12 consortium industry members working collaboratively to advance controlled environment agriculture. Dr. Kubota received Ph.D. in Horticultural Engineering and M.S. in Horticultural Science from Chiba University, Japan. Dr. Kubota is a Fellow of the American Society for Horticultural Science (ASHS).  In research, her focus is on science-based technology development for CEA crop such as lighting technologies, water and nutrient management, and introducing new crops for CEA. Dr. Kubota is very active in training professionals through online courses, hands-on training, and consultations.

Distinguished Professor & Director OHCEAC

Founder Serdar Mizrakci grew up in Istanbul, Turkey, where year-round access to ultra-fresh, hyper-local produce was the norm. His years of cooking with his mother and grandmother taught him to value good food and quality ingredients. After moving to the United States for business school, Serdar was struck by the lack of access to tasty, local, and fresh produce, particularly greens. He was astonished by the week-long trek most spinach made from California to the east coast, during which the greens lose half of their nutrient content. Never one to pass up a challenge, Serdar combined his aptitude for engineering and entrepreneurship and his appetite for really, really good food to found Element Farms. Serdar earned a Bachelor of Science degree in industrial engineering from Sabanci University in Istanbul and an MBA from Cornell University. Prior to founding Element Farms, Serdar founded an industrial robotics startup that improved industrial packaging processes.

Founder and CEO

My name is Bernard van Loon I currently work as business developer for Delphy Digital with a focus on North America. With past experience as a data scientist and an Msc in Plant Science focused on statistical crop modelling from Wageningen University, my aim is to combine theoretical and practical solutions to help growers take the next step in Data Driven Growing. Light is the key aspect for yield, and understanding how a crop reacts to light during different stages and scenarios is key for yield prediction and crop management. One part of Data Driven Growing with Delphy's QMS solutions is alloiwing a grower a deeper insight into how their lighting (indoor and outdoor) interacts with their crop throughout the growing season.

Victoria Moura is a sustainability and business professional with a Master’s in Sustainability Management from Columbia University and a bachelor’s from NYU Stern in Business Administration, focused on Computing and Data Science.
She has consulted with C40 Cities, Primestor Development, Plantation Quail, Companies for Net Zero, and Columbia University. Victoria brings expertise in sustainability strategy, stakeholder engagement, emissions reporting, and sustainable business development.
As President of Columbia’s Sustainability Management Student Association (SUMASA), she led key initiatives promoting sustainability across the university and beyond. She is fluent in English and Portuguese and proficient in Spanish.

Climate-Smart Agriculture Ecosystem Strategist

General Manager

Peter Ravensbergen (1967) is a Horticulture Sector Expert at Wageningen Social & Economic Research, an institute within Wageningen University & Research (WUR) in the Netherlands. He leads the Horticulture sector team. His focus is on the socioeconomic aspects of horticultural value chains, quality-driven logistics, and resilient food systems for smart cities. His expertise lies in translating knowledge questions from governments, institutions, and private companies around the world into research proposals, with the goal of strengthening the social and economic development of a sector or private companies.
As the son of a third-generation Dutch flower grower, Peter’s driving force is to make knowledge applicable: to bridge the gap between R&D and practice. His career has been marked by positions within government organizations, consulting firms, and the (semi-)private sector in the horticulture industry.
Peter has extensive national and international experience and a broad network spanning the U.S., Mexico, India, Eastern Europe, and the Balkans.
His areas of expertise include project design, project and program management, supply chain management, strategy development, and matchmaking.

Expertise leader Horticulture

My Name is Octavio Perez Rodriguez, currently I work for Nature Fresh farms in Delta Ohio, we have 45 acres of LED organic strawberries and 45 acres of HPS tomatoes. I have been working in this industry for almost 20 years, the last 12 year in USA and before I worked in Queretaro, Mexico in the Agropark. I have been working with lit crops for almost  12 years mainly with HPS,  and amost five years doing in house research about LED (top and interlighting),  but in 2023 we did our first LED crop with strawberries.

Gretchen Schimelpfenig is the executive director of the Greenhouse Lighting and Systems Engineering (GLASE) consortium and a senior engineer at Energy Resources Integration (ERI). Gretchen earned a M.S. in Civil Engineering from Stanford University in 2014 and a B.S. in Architectural Engineering from the University of Wyoming in 2012. She is a licensed Civil Professional Engineer in California and Vermont. At ERI, Gretchen helps greenhouse growers and indoor farmers identify and implement efficiency strategies through cost-effective energy management. Gretchen is the former Technical Director of Resource Innovation Institute (RII) and author of RII’s Lighting, HVAC, and Facility Design & Construction Best Practices Guides for CEA in partnership with the U.S. Department of Agriculture.

Senior Energy Engineer

Michael Roth serves as the Director Innovation at the Pennsylvania Department of Agriculture. He currently leads the Pennsylvania Agriculture Innovation Grant Program, a first-in-the-nation state fund. He also connects the PA agriculture sector to vital sectors like energy, technology, manufacturing, life sciences, and national security.

Director of Innovation

Born and raised near the city of Mechelen, in Belgium’s main greenhouse vegetable‑growing area. As the son of a tomato and lettuce grower he literally grew up between the plants in a greenhouse. That’s where his passion for plants and greenhouse growing originates.
 
Specialized in hydroponic growing of leafy vegetables and herbs in open field, greenhouses or closed environments, and plant propagation. Currently consulting and supporting projects all over the world in different climate zones (like Japan, Belgium, the Netherlands, Germany and North America).

Managing Partner

Jenn Frymark is the Chief Greenhouse Officer at Gotham Greens, a pioneer in controlled environment agriculture and one of North America's leading hydroponic fresh produce companies. Since joining the company in 2009, she has helped grow Gotham Greens from a single rooftop greenhouse in Brooklyn into a national network of greenhouse facilities spanning more than 1.8 million square feet across nine U.S. states. As Chief Greenhouse Officer, Jenn leads the company's greenhouse strategy, engineering, R&D, and growing operations, helping drive the design and optimization of new facilities while overseeing crop production and growing teams across the network. She holds a Bachelor of Science in Plant Biology from Arizona State University and a Master of Science in Plant Sciences from the Controlled Environment Agriculture Center (CEAC) at the University of Arizona.

Chief Greenhouse Officer

<a href="https://www.udel.edu/academics/colleges/canr/departments/plant-and-soil-sciences/faculty-staff/qingwu-meng/" target="_blank">Dr. Qingwu (William) Meng</a> is an Assistant Professor of Controlled-Environment Horticulture at the University of Delaware, where he leads the <a href="https://www.indooraglab.com/" target="_blank">Delaware Indoor Ag Lab (DIAL)</a>. His research integrates plant physiology with technology to improve the efficiency, productivity, and sustainability of greenhouse and indoor crop production through optimized lighting, environmental control, and root-zone management. Supported by sponsors such as the USDA, NASA, and FFAR, his work focuses on translating scientific discoveries into practical solutions for commercial controlled-environment agriculture (CEA). In addition to his research, he teaches courses in hydroponics, controlled-environment crop physiology and technology, and space crop production, with a strong emphasis on preparing the next generation of CEA professionals. Through research, teaching, and industry collaboration, his goal is to help accelerate the growth of a resilient and innovative CEA sector in North America.

Assistant Professor of Controlled-Environment Horticulture

Experienced executive with a demonstrated history of building and managing successful teams. Strong sales professional, skilled in Negotiation, Budgeting, Strategic Business Planning, Coaching, and Employee Development.

Vice President, North America

With over 30 years’ experience developing and leading successful companies, Paul has built a career on his belief in sustainable agriculture. As the founder of Backyard Farms, he brought locally grown, greenhouse tomatoes to the East Coast market. Paul holds a Bachelor of Science in Horticulture from Cornell University.

Dr. Qinglu Ying is an Assistant Extension Professor at the University of Kentucky, where she leads research, extension, and teaching programs in controlled environment agriculture (CEA). She received her Ph.D. from the University of Guelph in Canada, and has over ten years of experience in CEA. Her research focuses on optimizing controlled environment plant production systems to improve resource efficiency and crop performance. She is committed to supporting growers through applied research, practical outreach programs, and workforce development in the CEA sector.

Assistant Professor

My name is Marc Salvany, and I am the Chief Executive Officer and co-owner of Gavita International B.V. Through our flagship brand, Agrolux, we offer future-ready solutions, build strong partnerships, and deliver reliable services to professional growers worldwide. I lead the company’s global growth and transformation, with a strong focus on product innovation, operational excellence, and scalable supply chain and service networks. Before becoming an independent company through a management buy-out in 2025, Gavita was part of Hawthorne’s Professional Horticulture Lighting business, a division of the publicly listed Scotts Miracle-Gro Company. In 2026, we launched the LYRA platform, powered by AgroluxOS and HortiMesh, bringing lighting, data, and control together in one future-ready ecosystem.

Murat Kacira is director of the Controlled Environment Agriculture Center and he is a professor in the Biosystems Engineering Department at the University of Arizona. He received his B.S. degree in Agricultural Engineering in Cukurova University in Turkey and M.Sc. and Ph.D. degrees from Food, Agricultural and Biological Engineering from The Ohio State University in USA. His research involves automation, environmental control, alternative energy integrated CEA systems and resource use optimization in controlled environment agriculture systems including greenhouses and vertical farming-based plant factories with artificial lighting. He is a member of American Society of Agricultural and Biological Engineers (ASABE) and International Society for Horticultural Science (ISHS). He serves as Chair of the Division Precision Horticulture Engineering under ISHS.

Professor and Director of Controlled Environment Agriculture Center

Eric Highfield, founder of High Yield Horticulture, has been captivated by hydroponic systems for 25 years. His passion for soilless cultivation grew during his B.S. in molecular biology and deepened in graduate school, where he managed an aquaponics research greenhouse and defended his thesis on hydroponic-aquaculture production. He later earned his master's from the University of Arizona's Controlled Environment Agriculture Center and built a greenhouse management program at Santa Fe Community College.
His drive to advance local, sustainable food production led him to automation. Highfield's research led him to mobile gulley systems, the missing link for economically viable cut baby leaf salad production. He developed automated baby leaf facilities as Chief Agricultural Officer at Pure Green Farms and Fresh Local Produce of Ohio, then led Customer Support and Business Development at Green Automation.
Most recently, Eric designed and now oversees Canada's first fully automated greenhouse for ready-to-eat cut baby leaf lettuce at Haven Greens in King City, Ontario, where as the Chief Agricultural Officer he leads cultivation, production, maintenance and FSQA, producing 12,000 pounds of lettuce daily.
Highfield is an industry leader in automated baby leaf cultivation, guiding projects from concept to execution with a passion for sustainable, economically viable agriculture.

Chief Agricultural Officer

Hiroki Koga is the co-founder and CEO of Oishii, the company behind the world’s largest indoor vertical strawberry farm. Koga first recognized the immense pressures faced by our global food supply chain during his time consulting for Japan’s nascent controlled agriculture industry. After a fateful trip to a US grocery store, he realized there was an opportunity to raise the standard of fresh produce around the world through the power of vertical farming. Koga and his team have pioneered a technique where farmers, AI, robots and bees work together in the perfect environment for growing always-in-season, pesticide-free, non-GMO Japanese berries in the US — signaling a more delicious future for all.

Co-Founder and CEO

Strategic Coach

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