BANQUET DINNER KEYNOTE

Jack Cover, General Curator at The National Aquarium will be giving our Banquet Keynote titled, “Harbor Wetland: restoring wetland habitat to a waterfront city”! He will enlighten the evening with an experiential tour and overview of the Floating Wetland Exhibit, which opened in 2024 at The National Aquarium. To learn more about this project you can visit the link: https://aqua.org/explore/exhibits/harbor-wetland

Jack also extended the invite for anyone to visit the harbor wetland in person, free of charge, throughout the conference!

Research Projects

Josh Dusci, Indoor Agriculture Associate from Virginia State University will be conducting a presentation titled, “Aquaponic Research and Extension Programming at Virginia State University”. This presentation will cover ongoing research and extension, the impacts of the efforts, as well as future projects and trends.

Community/Educational Experiences

Tammy Cole, Director of Operations at Healthy Harvest Fresh, will conduct a presentation titled, “Growing the Future, the Journey of Healthy Harvest Fresh”. In her presentation she will cover the various educational experiences/programming, thriving community partnerships, applied research opportunities for students, and the abundant supply of fresh healthy produce and protein Healthy Harvest Fresh has been able to provide to the surrounding VA community.

Commercial/General Growing

T.Shane Johnson, Owner of Big Guns Coffee, will conduct a presentation titled, “Sustainable, Hydroponic Coffee Farms in the US. From Vision to Reality”. Pioneering the first innovative indoor hydroponic coffee farm in North Carolina, T. Shane will walk the audience through his vision to bring Coffee Farming to the United States. He is the founder of Big Guns Coffee https://www.biggunscoffee.com/, the only indoor Coffee Farm working on building Coffee Farms throughout the US.

Basics of Aquaponics

Justin Leavitt, Business Development for Moleaer, will conduct a presentation titled, “Oxygenation! Basic principals, Best Practices and Why it Matters”. This presentation will cover basic principles of oxygenation, best practices, and what role oxygen provides from a plant production and pathogen standpoint. Key takeaways will be reviewing what is too much and not enough oxygen, how to increase oxygen transfer through equipment and other means everyday growers can implement, and what you can expect when dialing in dissolved oxygen levels.

Basics of Aquaponics

Dr. Michael Timmons, Graduate Professor at Cornell University and Executive Director at The Aquaculture Engineering Society, will conduct a presentation titled, “Mass Balances, Loading Rates with Applications to Aquaponics”. This presentation will cover basic principles of mass balances for aquaponics systems and will provide with application to aquaponics and design examples.

Commercial/General Growing

Adam Cohen, Director of Growing Operations at Timberview Farmstead, will conduct a presentation titled, “Timberview Farmstead: Lessons Learned in Our First Year of Operation”. This presentation will cover the journey Timberview Farmstead has come since the Association toured our site during. the 2024 Conference. Learn about the various plants and fish grown since then, and learned a number of lessons along the way. Learn about the struggles Timberview has faced, how they have overcome them, and where they are headed!

Commercial/General Growing

Elshan Bal, Partner at Greenway Farms, will conduct a presentation titled, “Beyond the Harvest: Creating Value-Added Products with Aquaponic Fish and Crops”. In this session, Elshan will explore how to turn your aquaponic harvest into seasoned fish fillets, herb-infused teas and lemonades (Purple Basil & Thyme), pesto, and hummus using herbs like fresh basil. Additionally, this presentation will cover key considerations like food safety, processing setup, product development, and small-scale marketing.

Commercial/General Growing

Carlos Leon, CIO at BoFish, will conduct presentations titled, “Integrated Multi-trophic Aquaponics with Brackish water for Fish and Shrimp” and “The Aquaponics Lifestyle Model”. In these presentations, Carlos will explore several projects that BoFish is involved in from systems that integrate agritourism to more in-depth technical systems that co-produce fish and shrimp within a brackish water aquaponic system.

Commercial/General Growing

Amber Vallotton, Food Safety Extension Specialist at Virginia Tech, will conduct a presentation titled, “Mentoring Aquaponic Growers in GAP Certification Preparation”. In her presentation, Amber will highlight the primary food safety hazards in aquaponic systems, describe the basic steps of assisting growers in the audit process, and will share a case study video about her work with the first aquaponics farm to be GAP-certified within Virginia.

Research Projects

Curtis Childress, Agricultural Research Assistant at Virginia State University, will conduct a presentation titled, “Impact of Saline Water on Aquaponic System Performance: A Comparative Study of Freshwater and Saline Conditions for Fish and Plant Growth”. His presentation will cover a recently completed research project that investigated the effects of saline water (5 ppt) on aquaponic system performance and plant growth and quality of three different species (Kale, Swiss Chard, and Watercress).

Commercial/General Growing

Jen Wells, CEO of Lateral.Systems, will be conducting a presentation titled, “How to recognize imbalances before visible physical damage occurs”. This presentation is geared towards helping growers to recognize impending or actual imbalances in time to make correction before the value of crops or the health of fish is compromised. The presentation will discuss plant and fish tolerance levels, physiological responses that occur when one or more parameter is out of tolerance range, and demonstrate how the LATERAL Edge Platform data insights help farmers to recognize imbalances and make gradual corrections that avoid further stressing plants, fish, and the microbial community within the grow system.

Commercial/General Growing

Kelly Ochuko Egode, Founder and CTO of Omfeonix Agritech Ltd, will be conducting a presentation titled, “AquaECO AI: Bridging Energy Efficiency and Water Quality in Aquaponics”. The presentation will discuss an AI copilot for your aquaponics system—alerting you to energy waste, water imbalances, and even suggesting fixes. This copilot is AquaECO AI, which was built during AI for Energy Solution MIT 2025. Demonstration will be provided of how the tool’s dashboard and chatbot interface empower growers to cut costs and prevent losses, with examples from pilot deployments. Attendees will leave with a roadmap to implement AI-driven insights in any growing situation!

Research Projects

German Merino, Associate Professor at Universidad Catolica del Norte, will be conducting a presentation titled, “Bio-Integrated Production System Technology and an International Network”. In his presentation German will emphasize R&D between two Chilean institutions, one from the agriculture side and the other from aquaculture. Then we will provide an overview regarding the joint R&D and the deployment of pilot-scale aquaponic systems in several institutions to strengthen the technology transfer. And finally will describe international networking on bio-integrated systems.

All presenters who indicated they would like to have their content on our website are included in this list, some presenters are not shown, others are still on their way!