Dr. José Ramón Úrbez-Torres has been a research scientist at the Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada Summerland Research and Development Centre in British Columbia since June 2013. He has also been serving as an adjunct professor at the University of British Columbia, Okanagan campus since October 2017. Dr. Úrbez-Torres received a postgraduate master’s degree in viticulture, enology and wine marketing in 2001 from the International Social Science Council and a degree in agricultural engineering in 2004 from the University of Valladolid in Spain. He completed a Ph.D. in plant pathology in 2009 at the University of California, Davis. Dr. Úrbez-Torres has studied diseases of woody perennial crops—primarily grapevines, tree fruits and nut crops—since 1999 and his current research focuses on the development and implementation of sustainable management strategies for fungal, bacterial and viral diseases of grapevines and tree fruits in Canada. Dr. Úrbez-Torres is the current chair of the International Council for Grapevine Trunk Diseases.