Meet the team
LiteFarm is incubated at the Centre for Sustainable Food Systems at the University of British Columbia in coordination with a global team of staff, students, and contributors.
Antonella Sgarlatta
Tech Lead
Antonella (she/her) has an MsC in Biomedical Engineering. Since graduating she has worked as a software engineer in various industries, and most recently as an engineering manager. She is passionate about using technology as a tool to create great user experiences, and helping teams grow and maximize their potential. In her free time, she loves spending time with family (including her pet rabbit). You can usually find her gaming, crocheting or painting.
Dana James
Advisor
Dana has been involved with LiteFarm since 2017, when she supported focus groups with diversified farmers in Canada to understand their visions for a farm management platform that would meet their needs. For the past few years, she has been working on a participatory action research project with agroecological farmers across Latin America who are interested in using LiteFarm to measure agroecological indicators and streamline their agroecological certification processes.
David Trapp
Farmer Success Manager
David (he/him) has been involved with agriculture for most of his life, from working on farms and teaching gardening classes, to working as an Agricultural Technician with Peace Corps Paraguay, and now as the Farmer Success Manager. His interests in growing food sustainably have taken him around the world, and served as a bridge to connect with diverse groups of people and projects. He has an Interdisciplinary degree in Energy, Agriculture and Climate Change from Western Washington University. Apart from LiteFarm, he is the co-founder for Nuevos Brotes, a reintegration program that provides agricultural job training and support to incarcerated persons in Paraguay. He is currently based in Brazil, where he is pursuing a Masters in Organic Agriculture from the Federal University of Rural Rio do Janeiro and enjoys scuba diving, hiking, and dancing.
Denis Dovganyuk
Quality Assurance Engineer
Denis Dovganyuk is a Quality Assurance Engineer at LiteFarm. He completed his master’s degree in International Management at Uman National University of Horticulture. He focuses on helping farmers to have a product that meets all their expectations.
He appreciates working in an international team which gives a wonderful opportunity for new ideas. In his free time he enjoys playing football, traveling, and gardening.
Divya Chayanam
Product Lead
Divya (she/her) has been a business manager and a 0-1 product manager building different B2B and B2C products in e-commerce and logistics. She holds an engineering degree and an MBA. She likes solving problems and enjoys working on digital products that improve a user's day to day. In her spare time, Divya enjoys reading, spending time with her family and with nature.
Duncan Brain
Community Manager & Full Stack Engineer I
Duncan Brain is a Software Engineer at LiteFarm. He is passionate about open source software and is having fun starting out his career at LiteFarm. Duncan has two undergraduate degrees: one in Physics and one in Marketing. In his spare time he is in the process of creating a small-scale regenerative farm. Duncan has worked in a variety of industries including Education, Nuclear, Aerospace and Retail. He is also looking for remote work in Software Engineering so please feel free to check out his LinkedIn
Hannah Wittman
Professor, IRES Professor, Land and Food Systems
Dr. Hannah Wittman’s research examines the ways that the rights to produce and consume food are contested and transformed through struggles for agrarian reform, food sovereignty, and agrarian citizenship. Her projects include community-based research on farmland access, transition to organic agriculture, and seed sovereignty in British Columbia, agroecological transition and the role of institutional procurement in the transition to food sovereignty in Ecuador and Brazil, and the role that urban agriculture and farm-to-school nutrition initiatives play in food literacy education.
Ilyas Siddique
Advisor
Ilyas Siddique is Assoc. Prof. of Agroecosystems & heads the Applied Ecology Lab in the Department of Crop Science of the Federal University of Santa Catarina, Brazil. He graduated in Tropical Environmental Science (University of Aberdeen, UK), PhD in Ecology (University of Queensland, Australia), postdoc in Ecosystem Ecology (National Autonomous University of Mexico). Ilyas teaches & researches in agroecology, agroforestry, syntropic farming, weed ecology, agroecosystem multifunctionality, agroecological mechanization. In collaboration with World Agroforestry (CIFOR-ICRAF) and the University of British Columbia (UBC) he coordinates the participatory integration of practitioners' and scientific data into an open source database & app for intercropping & ecological restoration.
Joyce Sato-Reinhold
Full Stack Engineer II
Previous to starting out in software, Joyce was a grad student in the Faculty of Land and Food Systems studying animal welfare science. She traces her love of sustainable agriculture to the growing season she spent at UBC Farm and with xʷc̓ic̓əsəm, the Indigenous Health Research and Education Garden at UBC Farm. When she's not coding, she enjoys meditation, animals of all kinds (especially rodents), bhangra dance, and exploring the marshlands along the BC coast.
Kevin Cussen
Advisor
Kevin (he / him) has held an odd collection of roles throughout his career, from Peace Corps volunteer, to software engineer, to founder and CEO of a West African biogas-as-a-service company. For the last eight years, he's worked in various product management roles at a mix of private, public, and nonprofit entities, including leading roles on two open source projects - OpenLMIS and LiteFarm. Kevin has an MBA from the University of Washington and a Bachelors in Computer Science from the University of Texas at Dallas. In his spare time, Kevin likes spending time with his family, reading about history and economic theory, and long distance backpacking trips.
Khanh Dao Duc
Advisor
Khanh Dao Duc is an Assistant Professor of Mathematics at the University of British Columbia (UBC). Prior to UBC, he was born and grew up in Paris, where he did his PhD before working at UC Berkeley and UPenn as a Postdoctoral scholar. While his research primarily focuses on developing quantitative methods to analyze complex datasets in Neuroscience, structural and molecular cell biology, he joined the interdisciplinary Peter Wall Scholars program in 2021 and started to collaborate with Hannah Wittman to analyze the data generated from Litefarm. Since summer 2021, his team of students at UBC has been developing computational and statistical tools to generate technical reports, and help social scientists and researchers study the determinants of agrodiversity using the data collected in Litefarm.
Larisse Cavalcante
Larisse Cavalcante is a visiting master's research student at UBC investigating crop diversification in southern Brazil via LiteFarm. She is an environmental engineer highly interested in sustainable food systems, especially agroforestry. Larisse is also a certified social project manager with experience in the non-profit sector. She worked with volunteer management at Engineers Without Boarders USA (EWB-USA) and with fundraising at EWB Brazil. Her interests also include scientific communication and interdisciplinary studies. In her spare time, she likes to be outdoors, to socialize, to cook and to learn about different topics.
Advisor
Loïc Sans
Design Lead
Loïc has over 20 years of experience in designing digital products across various industries. As a devoted user advocate, he believes in taking a holistic human-centred approach to his work. His primary goal is to craft seamless user experiences that tackle complex problems. He's always striving to delight users, eliminate friction, and enhance their lives through thoughtful design. He is also a passionate and accomplished photographer. Loïc is currently based in Helsinki, Finland. During his downtime, he spends time with his family and escaping into the great outdoors, cycling, running or playing the guitar.
Sarah-Louise Ruder
Advisor
Sarah-Louise is a PhD candidate and Public Scholar at the University of British Columbia’s Institute for Resources, Environment, and Sustainability. Her social science research investigates challenges and opportunities for sustainability, justice, and data governance with the increasing digitalization of the food system. As a member of the LiteFarm team, she collaborates on data management, governance, and justice initiatives. In addition, she acts as a liaison with international networks, including the FAO’s Improving Global Agriculture Data community of practice.
Sayaka Ono
Full Stack Engineer II
Sayaka is a software developer who found her interest in programming while she was working as a magazine writer and got into web development due to her love for computers and software. She has a passion for making great user experiences and brings her experience, including working in an AgTech company and other industries to LiteFarm. Outside work, you can find her walking a seawall or a trail or exploring new restaurants and cafes.
Zia Mehrabi
Founder & Advisor
Dr. Mehrabi builds data products and services using a mix of public and private sector data, and combines this with cutting edge statistics and data science to solve problems in development for a better and fairer planet. He has experience in academia and as a consultant in the private and non-profit sectors in Africa, Asia, Latin America, Europe, and N. America. Dr. Mehrabi has also worked with organizations such as the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, CGIAR, United Nations Food and Agricultural Organization, and The World Bank. He holds a BA in Biological Sciences and a PhD from the University of Oxford.
