Alumnus testimonial
Hardware and software for grading fruits and vegetables
I’m Arturo Escaroz, from Mexico, and I graduated from the MSc Biosystems Engineering. I followed two tracks: Farm Technology and Entrepreneurship. Studying this MSc at Wageningen University was the best decision because it accurately combined engineering with agriculture and, within these two subjects, the programme has a wide range of topics from logistics to robotics, and from cows to tomatoes.
Living and studying in The Netherlands was a great experience, you can easily combine studies with social life. Although Wageningen is a small town, you meet people from different nationalities and backgrounds. Most of the time, while at the university or at a social gathering, you are involved in passionate and profound conversations about agriculture, biotechnology, food, sustainability, environment and innovation.
Vertical farms
My drive is innovation, technology and agriculture and that is why my internship and thesis topic were about Vertical farms and Automated mass-reared insects’ production systems, respectively. In my internship, I nicely combined business cases (entrepreneurship) with controlled-environment agriculture (farm technology) while my thesis topic was all about, my favourite course, Biosystems design combined with an innovative source of protein. After the internship, I was hired by the same company in The Netherlands and worked with innovative agricultural projects where I applied knowledge acquired at WUR. Then, I moved to France to work for one of the leaders in the insect protein production worldwide where I spent a couple of years fully applying the content of the courses taken in this master programme and converging, for example, in two patents listed, one for controlled environment ‘HVAC’ for vertical farms (animals and plants) and one for AGV’s (automated guided vehicles) used in indoor agricultural systems.
Grading fruits and vegetables
After two years in France, I came back to The Netherlands, where I’m working for Ellips, a Dutch company and industry leader that develops hardware and software for grading fruits and vegetables, where we make use of the best technologies available and have thousands of clients around the globe. In retrospective, I really value the knowledge acquired in this Master and to be able to quickly understand the different aspects of an agrifood related organization and how, from my biosystems engineer skillset, contribute to its objectives.
Animals, plants, HVAC, artificial intelligence, food production systems, agrifood logistics, greenhouses, agricultural drones or automated vehicles, bio-refineries: if your passion is one or more of these topics, don’t hesitate to enroll in this Master's programme at WUR.