Professor Stewart is Director of the Advanced Plant Growth Centre (APGC, https://www.apgc.org.uk/), a £30M Tay Cities deal regional development project hosted at the James Hutton Institute. For over 30 years Derek has worked at the industry-academia interface and has led multiple (inter)national multipartner projects that, to date, total ~£300M. As director of the APGC he oversees the novel research, development and innovation centred on the development of pre and post harvest innovation, including controlled environment agriculture, crop storage etc.