Clément Vigneault

Dr. Clément Vigneault is granted the CSAE/SCGR grade of Fellow, in recognition of his outstanding contributions to the field of postharvest engineering, and for his service to CSAE/SCGR and ASAE. He has served as a reviewer of scientific articles for both societies and has also chaired technical sessions at CSAE/SCGR meetings. He has been a member of CSAE/SCGR since 1977.
Dr. Vigneault has over 20 years of agricultural engineering experience. After obtaining his Master's degree from Laval University (Quebec) in 1982, he began his career as an Energy Engineer at Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada. He completed his Doctorate degree in 1992 at the Department of Agricultural Engineering, McGill University. In 1996, Dr. Vigneault founded the Agriculture and Agro-Food Canada Postharvest Quality Laboratory at St-Jean-sur-Richilieu, which has the national mandate of researching and developing new technologies to improve the storability and quality of fresh fruits and vegetables. This "one-of-a-kind" well-resourced laboratory brings together the expertise of plant physiologists, pathologists and engineers.

Dr. Vigneault is currently working as a research scientist at Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada's Horticulture Research and Development Centre (HRDC), where he leads the Postharvest Quality laboratory. He has been adjunct professor in the Department of Bioresource Engineering at McGill University (Canada), and in the FEAGRI at Unicamp University (Brazil), since 1992 and 2002 respectively. He has been collaborating as associate researcher with EARTH University (Costa Rica) since 1999.
Dr. Vigneault's research in postharvest engineering has contributed in a significant way to the advancement of engineering design and to the economic well being of society. With the collaboration of IPL Plastics and Laval University, Dr. Vigneault co-designed and patented reusable plastic containers that revolutionized the way in which horticultural produce is handled. The reusable containers are now available and widely used on the market for transporting and handling horticultural produce (thereby increasing the quality of the horticultural produce delivered to the consumer, reducing their losses by 15 % and reducing the waste produced by cardboard containers). Dr. Vigneault has also performed significant work in research tools development, winter coldness storage and uses, and weed electrocution. He served as an expert consultant, mainly in construction and modification of storage facilities and precooling systems for horticultural produce.

Dr. Vigneault was awarded the AgCellence Prize in the Agri-Food sector in 1996, was nominated for the Mentor of the Year Award in 1999 from the Federal Public Sector Youth Internship Program, received a Professional Institute of the Public Service of Canada Recognition in 2001 and the Prix d'Excellence de Partenariat-Recherche from Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada in 2002. To date, Dr. Vigneault has over 420 publications to his credit, which include 57 refereed journal articles, 17 book chapters, 2 patents and hundreds of technical publications. His work has been published in four languages: English, French, Portuguese and Spanish. Dr. Vigneault is well known nationally and internationally as a scientific leader in postharvest engineering.