Ji Zhou

Biography

Ji Zhou (周济) is an expert in multi-scale plant phenotyping, computer vision (CV) based trait analysis, AI-assisted cereal breeding, and artificial intelligence (AI) predictive modelling. Presently, he is a senior group leader at the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS) Center for Excellence in Molecular Plant Sciences, in Shanghai. He and his lab have been continuously contributing to the global plant and crop research community, including AI- and CV-powered analytic solutions for assessing seed quality and vigour (e.g. SeedGerm and SeedGerm-VIG), screening nitrogen use efficiency wheat varieties using LiDAR (CropQuant-3D), performing drone phenotyping to measure growth- and yield-related trait for rice (AirMeasurer) and horticultural crops such as pears and apples (OrchardQuant-3D), establishing ultra-scale yield prediction for lettuces (AirSurf), and monitoring growth patterns (CropSight), yield formation (YieldQuant-Mobile), and disease dynamics of Fusarium head blight (FHB-YOLO) in wheat. These studies were enabled by cross-disciplinary research with groups in the UK (e.g. University of Cambridge, UoC, NIAB, and John Innes Centre, JIC), France (e.g. INRAe and University of Angers), Japan (Tokyo University), and China (CAS, and Nanjing Agricultural University, NAU).

Ji is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Biology (FRSB), an associate editor for journals such as Horticulture Research, Plant Phenomics, and The Crop Journal. Since 2013, he has published 35+ research articles (both English and Chinese) in leading academic journals. At CSC, Ji collaborates with Prof Eves-van den Akker for plant-nematode interactions, as well as Prof Ian Henderson for AI-powered genome annotation and prediction. Besides, Ji works closely with breeding and growing companies such as Bayer Crop Science, Syngenta, and the POME consortium. He holds a Professorship at NAU and CAS, course lecturer and project supervisor for MPhil in crop improvement and computer science undergraduates at UoC. Prior to CAS, Ji was the Head of Data Sciences Department at NIAB, project leader at Earlham, joint research fellow between JIC and TGAC, and a post-doctoral researcher at The Sainsbury Laboratory in Norwich UK. Before his academic career, he worked in industry for nearly a decade, initially as a bilingual IT professional in Shanghai, then a systems analyst and a project consultant at Norwich Union, Aviva UK.