Prof Zhou has been a Fellow of the Royal Society of Biology (FRSB) since 2019, Senior Associate Editor of academic journals including Horticulture Research, Plant Phenomics, and The Crop Journal. Since 2013, he has published over 40 research articles as a lead author in journals such as New Phytologist, Plant Physiology, Plant Biotechnology Journal, Advanced Science, Horticulture Research, and Plant Phenomics. His research integrates AI, CV, and crop phenomics with genetics and breeding to address challenging problems in crop science and improvement. He also holds professorships at NAU and UCAS and serves as a course lecturer and a project supervisor at the University of Cambridge.

His lab has continuously contributed to the global plant and crop research community by developing AI-assisted and CV-powered analytical solutions for assessing seed quality and vigour (e.g. SeedGerm and SeedGerm-VIG), screening wheat varieties for resource use efficiency using LiDAR (i.e. CropQuant-3D), performing drone-based phenotyping to measure performance- and yield-related trait during key growth stages in rice (e.g. AirMeasurer) and wheat (e.g. LeafTip-RN), conducting 3D-based trait analysis of key horticultural crops such as pears and apples (i.e. OrchardQuant-3D), establishing large-scale yield prediction for lettuce (AirSurf), monitoring seasonal growth patterns under complex field conditions (CropSight), and analysing yield formation in rice (Panicle-Cloud) and wheat (YieldQuant-Mobile). He received Bayer Crop Science’s Global G4T award in 2022, the Royal Society’s International Exchange Award in 2023, the International Seed Testing Association (ISTA) Innovation Award in 2024, and the NIAB Bentley Corporate Innovation Award in 2025.

Prior to joining CAS, Ji has been studying and living in the UK for over 23 years. He was the Head of Data Sciences Department at Cambridge NIAB, a project leader at Earlham, a joint research fellow at JIC and TGAC, and a postdoctoral researcher at The Sainsbury Laboratory in Norwich, UK. Before entering academia, he worked in industry for nearly a decade, initially as a bilingual IT professional in Shanghai, then as a systems analyst and project consultant in the financial sector in the UK (i.e. Norwich Union, the Aviva group).

Ji Zhou (周济) is an expert in multi-scale plant phenotyping, computer vision (CV)- and artificial intelligence (AI)-based trait analysis, multimodal predictive modelling, remote sensing, and cereal breeding. Currently, he is a Senior Group Leader at the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS) Center for Excellence in Molecular Plant Sciences (CEMPS) in Shanghai, China. His cross-disciplinary research combines AI-assisted research and development (R&D) with various sensing platforms (e.g. drones, robotic systems, multi- and hyperspectral imaging sensors) to address challenging problems in plant sciences. He collaborates with leading research groups in China, UK, France and Japan, including CAS, Nanjing Agricultural University, the University of Cambridge, the Crop Science Centre, the National Institute of Agricultural Botany (NIAB), University of Angers, Tokyo University, and Kyoto University. Some of his work has also resulted in commercialised technologies and patents, which have been licensed to multinational seed and breeding companies such as Syngenta, BASF, and Bayer Crop Science.