Dr Eri Hayashi

Eri serves as president of the Japan Plant Factory Association (JPFA), a nonprofit organization devoted to academic and business advancements in plant factory/controlled environment agriculture (CEA).

Before joining the JPFA, Eri worked at a private research institute in Tokyo, specializing in technology advancement for global food production. She has been conducting international field research on plant factories/CEA since 2008. She has published multiple research papers and has been a research project manager on artificial intelligence- and phenotyping-based next-generation plant factory for environmental control and breeding. 

She has a keen interest in technological advances, including phenotyping, in plant factories. She received a Ph.D. from the Graduate School of Horticulture, Chiba University. She was a co-convener of the Symposium (S08) of Advances in Vertical Farming at the 31st International Horticultural Congress (IHC 2022), and led the JPFA in organizing the first JPFA International Symposium on Plant Factory (ISPF 2023) in Chiba, Japan. 

She is a co-editor of a book entitled Advances in Plant Factories: New Technologies in Indoor Vertical Farming published in 2023 by Burleigh Dodds Science Publishing. She is an Associate Member of the Science Council of Japan.