Yingxia was a PhD candidate at WUR and the Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences (CAAS, China). The general objective of her PhD research was 'space-time statistical analysis and modelling of nitrogen use efficiency indicators of China'. Yingxia was supervised by Gerard Heuvelink, Zhanguo Bai and Ping He (CAAS) and resulted in the thesis Statistical analysis and modelling of crop yield and nitrogen use efficiency in China

Stephan is a lecturer at Stellenbosch University in South Africa and a PhD candidate at WUR. His PhD research is on developing modelling frameworks in which machine learning models can incorporate measurement error  in digital soil mapping. He will also investigate ways of mapping soil properties with multivariate machine learning, as well as mapping soil thickness with machine learning. Stephan is supervised by Gerard Heuvelink (WUR, ISRIC), Laura Poggio (ISRIC) and David Hofmeyr (Stellenbosch University).

Qiuhong is a PhD candidate jointly trained by ISRIC, Wageningen University (WU) and the Chinese Academy of Academy of Agricultural Sciences (CAAS). Her PhD research is on using mechanistic models, machine learning and geostatistics to model the relationship between potato yield and soil nutrients in China. Qiuhong is supervised by Gerard Heuvelink (ISRIC and Soil Geography and Landscape group, WU), Johan Leenaars (ISRIC), Tom Schut (Plant Production Systems group, WU) and Ping He (Institute of Agricultural Resources and Regional Planning, CAAS).

Musefa is a PhD candidate of the Soil Geography and Landscape group at WUR and ISRIC, where he works under the supervision of Prof. dr. Gerard Heuvelink (WUR, ISRIC), Johan Leenaars (ISRIC), Dr. Temesgen Desalegn and Dr. Mezgebu Getnet (Ethiopian Institute of Agricultural Research, EIAR, Ethiopia). His PhD research is on generating quality-assessed land-soil-crop information to support climate smart agriculture in Ethiopia. The PhD project is supported by the “Land, Soil, and Crop Information Services (LSC-IS) to support Climate Smart Agriculture” project in East Africa under the framework of the European initiative of Development Smart Innovation through Research in Agriculture (DeSIRA). He is a soil researcher in EIAR, Ethiopia.

Mirjam graduated from Wageningen University in Plant Sciences in 2015 and started her PhD in 2016. During her PhD, she did research on the 'effects of micro nutrient fertilization on crop growth in sub-Saharan Africa'. Her work has been supervised by Ellis Hoffland (Soil Quality, WUR); Bas Kempen (ISRIC) assisted with digital soil mapping and resulted in the thesis Models for predicting nutrient availability in soils from sub-Saharan Africa

Marcos came to ISRIC as a PhD candidate in 2013. In Argentina, he worked for the Soil Institute of the National Institute of Agricultural Technology (INTA), which granted his PhD study. His well received thesis was about structural equation modelling for digital soil mapping.

Scientific support was provided by Gerard Heuvelink and Bas Kempen.

Luc was a Dutch PhD student, working on geostatistics and more specifically the use of Bayesian algorithms to increase the reliability of soil maps and landuse maps. Besides ISRIC, this PhD project was also supported by the Soil Geography and Landscape group (Wageningen UR) and by WenR (formerly Alterra, Wageningen UR). His work was supervised by Gerard Heuvelink and Dick Brus and resulted in the thesis Model-based Bayesian geostatistics for multi-scale mapping of soil agronomic variables.

Eric is a PhD candidate in the Soil Geography and Landscape group at Wageningen University & Research (WUR) and ISRIC - World Soil Information, where he works under the supervision of Prof. Dr. Gerard Heuvelink, Dr. Ikram Chairi (University of Mohammed VI Polytechnic, UM6P, Morocco) and Dr. Vincent Logah (Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology, KNUST, Ghana). Eric is working on the Fertilizer Research and Responsible Implementation (FERARI) program to develop a machine learning model for yield prediction in Ghana. Eric is a soil scientist with a BSc in Geomatic Engineering from KNUST, Ghana, and an MPhil in Soil Health and Environmental Resources Management from the CSIR – College of Science and Technology, Ghana.

Cynthia was a PhD candidate at ISRIC and Wageningen University, where she worked under the supervision of Dr Ir. Gerard Heuvelink, Dr Ir. Titia Mulder and Ir. Niels Batjes on the development and use of a soil information system for imperfect soil data.

Bertin Takoutsing is an Associate Scientist in Land Health Management, working with the World Agroforestry (ICRAF) in Cameroon. He was a PhD candidate at Wageningen University & Research (WUR), and his doctoral research focused on the application and extension of state-of-the-art digital soil mapping approaches to analyse and quantify the spatial patterns of soil properties while accounting for uncertainty in soil measurements. As part of his PhD, Bertin visited ISRIC for six months in 2019, where he developed his research proposal and acquired additional skills in digital soil mapping techniques. more