The problem I work on has not changed. It is the same one it has always been: a measurement that matters is available only to people with specialist equipment or expert judgement, so most of the people who need it never take it.

With Petiole Pro that measurement was leaf area, and the answer was a smartphone camera. With MooMore it is inflammation, and the answer is a thermal sensor. The crop and the cow are different; the shape of the problem is identical.

Two things, and neither of them was the science. The first was finding a sensor configuration that holds up in a working milking parlour rather than a laboratory — warm, wet, busy, and entirely uninterested in what worked on the bench. The second, and the harder one, was finding a farm willing to let me try.

That second one is the reason so much good agritech never leaves the demo stage. You can have a promising signal and still have nowhere real to test it. What you need is someone who farms for a living, who has every reason to say no, and who says yes anyway.

So I want to say a proper thank you to William Sanders, Farm Manager at Major Farming Ltd, who opened his parlour and his herd to this project. William and I are both Oxford Farming Conference 2026 Inspire Programme Fellows — we met through Inspire, and this trial exists because of that. He has given the project his time, his judgement, and his patience with a camera in the parlour, and MooMore is a far better idea for it. Thank you, William. I could not have done this without you.

“It took four years to find the right farm partner and technology, but I'm determined to prove women can lead the future of agritech.”

It funds twelve months of validation with a named partner, which is the step that turns a plausible signal into evidence. The findings will be published whether or not the signal holds — that was the commitment when the project started and it has not changed.

The award was made in the programme's tenth-anniversary round: 100 women recognised from 1,590 applications, of whom 61 received grants.

• MooMore — AI thermal imaging for early dairy lameness detection. In validation. moomore.com
• Petiole Pro — smartphone crop analysis tools, used by research organisations across six continents and cited in peer-reviewed research
• Teaching — AI in agriculture, to more than 3,000 students across 121 countries

Read my full biography → · Innovate UK project page →