• Planning, development, management and implementation of large-scale field and greenhouse experiments in temperate and semi-arid agronomic and pedoclimatic conditions.

• Design, supervision and support for the implementation of on-farm and retail surveys to quantify impacts of variety choice, agronomic protocols, processing and supply chain parameters on nutritional and to a lesser extent sensory quality of foods (e.g. cereals, grapes, potato, dairy products, vegetables).

• Management of laboratory facilities as well as development and use of analytical methods for the chemical, biochemical and molecular analysis of plant tissues such as (i) Determination of plant/soil macro-micronutrient and heavy metals by using Dumas combustion, Inductively Coupled Plasma Optical Emission Spectrometry and colorimetric methods; (ii) Determination (by using liquid chromatography and colorimetry) of plant secondary metabolites as well as the GC based fatty acid profiling of animal and plant fats; and (iii) Genomic, transcriptomic and proteomic profile analysis of plant tissues using various platforms and technologies

• Development, management and implementation of a randomised, controlled human dietary intervention study aimed at evaluating effects of contrasting diets (habitual Western vs Mediterranean) and food type (organic versus conventional) on human health markers.

Data management and statistical analyses of datasets generated by the field trials, on farm and retail surveys and lab analysis (internally and externally). This included the:

• establishment of easy-to-use and accessible databases that allow quick and accurate analysis and retrieval of information;

• advanced statistical modelling of large datasets using univariate and multivariate methods;

• bioinformatics analysis of molecular datasets (microarrays, NGS sequencing, etc.);

• performance of complex statistical analysis in order to link molecular plant response with agronomic, environmental and other plant physiological characteristics;

• performance of systematic reviews (selecting, evaluating, and synthesizing all available evidence) as well as carrying out the associated meta-analysis in R.

Proficient user of: i) R environment (various packages for data management, statistical modelling, metanalysis and graphics, as well as being able to write scripts, loops, perform complicated tasks and any kind of analysis); ii) Statistical Modelling tools such as, Minitab, SPSS and Canoco, iii) various Microsoft office platforms

1. Supervised numerous MSc and PhD students and also technical staff working on field trials and in analytical laboratories. Leo's support for research students included research project design, field and lab work, experimental design, development of analytical methods, statistical analysis of data and review/proofreading theses.

2. Taught at undergraduate and postgraduate level, as well as in skills training modules focused on professional development for new cohorts of MSc and PhD students and junior scientists, farmers and consultants

Leo successfully acquired funding from industry, charitable trusts and the EU for the following projects:

• Identify the effects and interactions between fertilisation regimes and beneficial bacteria inoculation nitrogen-fixing technology on wheat agronomic performance

• Evaluate the effects of saponite-clay soil amendments on disease development and yield of field potato and cabbage, and greenhouse tomato crops

• Identify the agronomic factors responsible for nutritional differences between organic and conventional crops (based on data generated from the Nafferton Factorial Systems Comparison trial)

• Vocational education and training in UK

• Participation in the preparation of proposals for the VALUE WASTE-2015 and ECObreed-2018 large consortium EU H2020 research project