Malcolm Hawkesford is head of the Plant Sciences Department and leads the Designing Future Wheat strategic programme at Rothamsted Research in the UK. He is a crop scientist specializing in wheat research, particularly regarding nutrient and resource use efficiency for optimising yield and quality. He leads a multidisciplinary team studying crop performance from the gene to the field. He has published widely on plant nutrition and specifically on membrane transporters. Recently he has pioneered initiatives at Rothamsted, utilizing both drone technology and a novel ground-based state of the art robotic system for automated field phenotyping. He is a lead PI on the Defra WGIN project and the BBSRC WISP prebreeding project and a CoI on Newton bilateral nitrogen programmes with both Brazil and India. He is also chair of the Nutrient Use Efficiency expert working group of the International Wheat Initiative, which includes participation worldwide.