Digital Agriculture Seminars
Since Fall 2020, Purdue Agriculture has hosted the Data-Driven Agriculture seminar series featuring experts in data science and digital agriculture from across Purdue's College of Agriculture and beyond.
To view all past seminars, check out the Data-Driven Agriculture playlist on Purdue Agriculture’s YouTube channel.
Fall 2025 Seminars
October 23 - Working with Cattle Producers to Use Tecbology and Their Own Data to Create Value - Mike Van Koevering, Senior Director - Elanco and Eric Schilling, Global Learning & Development Director - Elanco
November 6 - Gene Editing for a Resilient Future: The Pairwise Vision for Transforming Agriculture - Ryan Bartlett, Chief Technology Officer - Pairwise
November 20 (VIRTUAL) - Sanjeewa Narayana, IT Technician - University of Guelph
December 4 - Aaron Shew, Vice President Product & Data - ACRES
Spring 2025 Seminars
*Seminars will be held in person in WSLR 116 on Purdue's campus (12:30-1:30 pm) unless specified.
July 10 (summer seminar) - Deep Learning & Geospatial Techniques in Agricultural Management - Dr. Nagesh Kumar, Professor, Civil Engineering IIsC, Bangalore, India
April 24 - A Prospective on the Role of Precision Ag Technologies in Agricultural Production Systems - Darian Landolt, Manager of Agronomic Design and Research at CNH Industrial.
April 3 - AI and Farms of The Future: Lessons from the US Mid-West - Dr. Girish Chowdhary, Associate Professor and Donald Biggar Willet Fellow at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign.
Feb. 20 - Advancing Digital Agriculture for Empowering Farming Decisions - Dr. Ignacio Ciampitti, Professor of Agronomy and Co-Director of IDAAS, Purdue University
Jan. 27 - Understanding drivers of spatial and temporal variability of the soil-plant-atmosphere system - Dr. Bruno Basso , Professor of Earth and Environmental Sciences, Michigan State University
Feb. 6 - How Networked Smart Forest Systems Can Help Improve Operational Forestry - Dr. Rob Keefe, Associate Professor of Forest Operations, University of Idaho Experimental Forest (UIEF).
Fall 2024 Seminars
*Seminars will be held in person in WSLR 116 on Purdue's campus (12:30-1:30 pm)
- Sept. 19 - Generative AI for Digital Twin Reconstruction - Dr. Bedrich Benes, Professor of Computer Science & Associate Department Head, Purdue University
- Sept. 26 - Purdue's Handheld Leaf Scanners for Accurate and On-The-Spot Crop Diagnosing - Dr.Jian Jin, Associate Professor, Agricultural & Biological Engineering, Purdue University
- Oct. 3 - Integrating data-driven tools and novel technologies for targeted weed management - Dr. Tommy Butts, Clinical Assistant Professor, Site-Specific Weed Management, Botany & Plant Pathology, Purdue University
- Oct. 15 - Forestry Reimagined: The Impact of High-Throughput Phenotyping with a Focus on Hyperspectral Reflectance - Dr. Jan Stejskal, Department of Forest Genetics an d Physiology, Czech University of Life Sciences Prague
- Oct. 17 - Enhancing soil and agroecosystem sustainability under climate change using geoinformatics - Dr. Sidd Paul, Assistant Professor Geospatial Science, Agronomy, Purdue University
- Oct. 24 - Data to Science (D2S) - Open Source Online Platform for Geospatial Data Management - Dr. JinhaJung, Associate Professor of Civil Engineering, Purdue University, Dr. Minyoung Jung Postdoctoral Researcher in Geomatics, Civil Engineering, Purdue University, and Ben Hancock Senior Web Developer, Agricultural & Biological Engineering, Purdue University
- Oct. 31 - Climate-Smart Forestry at the Nature Conservancy: Quantifying and Enabling Global Forests' Ability to Mitigate Climate Change - Ethan Belair Natural Climate Solutions Forester, The Nature Conservancy
- Nov. 7 - Exploring Phenotyping using Virtual Reality- Dr. Phil Townsend, Professor of Forest & Wildlife Ecology, University of Wisconsin
- Dec. 5 - Exploring Plant Phenotyping with Virtual Reality - Tom Kronewitter, Senior Multimedia Designer, Agricultural Communications, Purdue University
Digital Agriculture Events
past seminars
*Seminars will be held in person in WSLR 116 on Purdue's campus (12:30-1:30 pm).
- Feb. 1 – New Offerings for Learning Digital Ag/AI, Dr. Ankita Raturi, Assistant Professor of Agricultural & Biological Engineering, Purdue University & Dr. Diane Wang, Assistant Professor of Agronomy, Purdue University, Dr. Jacob Hosen, Assistant Professor of Forestry & Natural Resources, Purdue University, and Moderator, Dr. Bruce Erickson, Clinical Professor of Digital Agriculture, Purdue University.
- Feb 15 – (no recording) Spectral and thermal infrared sensing for plant physiological and biomedical phenotyping with two case studies, Dr. Yufeng Ge, Advanced Sensing Systems Engineer, Director of Plant Phenomics, University of Nebraska-Lincoln
- Feb. 22 – Remote sensing using Signals of Opportunity: Potential Applications in Digital Agriculture, Dr. Jim Garrison, Professor of Aeronautics and Astronautics, Purdue University
- Mar. 7 – Algorithms for Distributed State Estimation and Classification in Large-Scale Senor Networks, Dr. Shreyas Sundaram, Co-Director, Institute for Control, Optimization and Networks, Purdue University
- Mar. 21 – The role of genomics in digital agriculture: from data integration to practical applications, Dr. Luiz Brito, Associate Professor of Animal Sciences, Purdue University
- Apr. 4 – The challenges of managing data at Purdue Ag Centers, Alex Helm, Assistant Director, Purdue Agricultural Centers, Rachel Stevens, Farm Manager, Agronomy Center for Research & Education, Jarrod Doucette, Director, Ag Data Services
- Apr. 18 – Controlled and Field Environment Phenotyping: How Root and Shoot Phenotyping Give Insight to Field Performance, Plant Science team, Purdue University
- Fall 2023 Seminars
Seminars will be held in person in WSLR 116 on Purdue's campus.
- Aug. 31 - Computational thinking for undergraduates in the natural sciences: yes, it's for everyone!, Dr. Diane Ran Wang, Assistant Professor, Agronomy, Purdue University
- Sept. 21 - Third Wave AI: Interpretable, Robust, Trustworthy Machine Learning for Digital Forest and Agriculture, Dr. Guang Lin, Director of Data Science Consulting Services and Professor of Mechanical Engineering & Mathematics, Purdue University
- Jan. 19 - Confronting an Age of Change, Dr. Joseph Mascaro, Director of Science Programs, Planet Labs
- Feb. 2 - Sensing in Plant Science and Natural Resources: Decisions Driven by Big Data or Better Data?, Matt Bechdol, Chief Executive Officer, GRYFN
- Feb. 16 - Towards next-generation forest structural trait assessment using physics-based simulations - how cartoons can aid in our quest, Dr. Jan van Aardt, Professor, College of Science, Rochester Institute of Technology
- Mar. 2 - Mobilizing agronomic knowledge, Carlos Hirsch, Chief Business Development Officer, Eiwa Corp.
- Mar. 23 - Panel Discussion: Technology adoption insights from stakeholders, Dr. Bruce Erickson, Clinical Associate Professor of Digital Agriculture, Agronomy, Purdue University; Dr. Ankita Raturi, Assistant Professor, Agricultural & Biological Engineering, Purdue University; Dr. Linda Pfeiffer, Associate Professor, Agricultural Sciences Education and Communication, Purdue University.
- Apr. 6 - Purdue’s Open Ag Technology and Systems Center – progress and collaboration
opportunities, Dr. James Krogmeier, Professor, Electrical and Computer Engineering, Purdue University - Apr. 20 - High-resolution high speed structured light 3D imaging for close-range applications, Dr. Song Zhang, Professor and Assistant Head for Experiential Learning, Mechanical Engineering, Purdue University (NOTE: this video link can only be opened by purdue.edu users)
- May 4 - An Overview of Digital Agriculture Research in the AIFARMS National AI Institute, Dr. Vikram Sandinand Adve, Donald B. Gillies Professor of Computer Science and Co-Director, Center for Digital Agriculture, University of Illinois
- Sept. 15 - Using the Right Tool for the Job: Map Accuracy vs Classification Efficacy, Guofan Shao, professor of forestry and natural resources, Purdue University
- Sept. 22 - Remote Sensing for Forest Type Differentiation and Fuel Load Estimation: A Summary of Research and Lessons Learned, Aaron Maxwell, assistant professor of geography, West Virginia University
- Sept. 29 - Data-Driven Agricultural Water Management, Keith Cherkauer, professor of agricultural and biological engineering, Purdue University
- Oct. 6 - Earthformer: Exploring Space-Time Transformers for Earth System Forecasting, Wenming Ye, Principal Research Product Manager Lead at Amazon Web Services AI; Xingjian Shi, Senior Applied Scientist at Amazon Web Services AI
- Oct. 20 - Purdue's Controlled-environment and Field-based Phenotyping Facilities, Yang Yang, director of digital phenomics, Institute for Plant Sciences, Purdue University
- Oct. 27 - A Roadmap toward Scalably Quantifying Field-Level Agricultural Carbon Outcome, Zhenong Jin, assistant professor for digital agriculture, University of Minnesota
- Nov. 3 - Using Hyperspectral Imaging to Quantify Heavy Metal Stress and Predict Plant Uptake, Lori Hoagland, professor of horticulture, Purdue University
- Nov. 17 - Radar on Root Structure, Liz LaRue, assistant professor of biological sciences, The University of Texas at El Paso
- Dec. 1 - Weather and Climate Data and Information for Non-Meteorologists, Beth Hall, Indiana State Climate Office Director, Purdue University
- Jan. 26 – Hyperspectral Phenotyping in Precision Agriculture, John Couture, associate professor of entomology and forestry and natural resources
- Feb. 24 – Data-Driven Workforce Panel moderated by Bruce Erickson, clinical associate professor of digital agriculture
- Panel members include Keith Tinsey, Directory of Operations-Midwest, Black Gold Farms; Shrinivas Mane, Distinguished Research Scientist and Head of Computational Sciences, Elanco Animal Health and Robin Thomas, Early Talent Acquisition, Syngenta
- April 21 – Disease Detection Technologies, Christian Cruz, assistant professor of botany and plant pathology
- Dec. 8 – Understanding Risks and Vulnerabilities via Food Systems Dashboards, Jayson Lusk, department head and distinguished professor of agricultural economics
- Feb. 4 – Precision Soil Maps: Moving Beyond Soil Survey. Jason Ackerson, assistant professor of agronomy
- Feb. 11 – The Cover Up: UAV Assessment of Soybean. Shaun Casteel, associate professor of agronomy and Extension soybean and small grains specialist
- Feb. 18 – UAVs in Livestock Production. John Scott, Extension coordinator for digital agriculture
- Feb. 25 – Partnering with Industry to Move from Reactive to Proactive: A Dairy Farm Example. Jackie Boerman, assistant professor of animal sciences, and Paul Ousterhout, iYOTAH
- Mar. 4 – Digital Forestry: Key Developments in Terrestrial Remote Sensing. Brady Hardiman, assistant professor of forestry and natural resources; Guofan Shao, professor of forestry and natural resources; and Ayman Habib, professor of civil engineering
- Mar. 11 – On Farm Experimentation, Robert Nielsen, professor of agronomy and Extension corn specialist
- Mar. 18 – Digital Forestry: Key Developments in Aerial Remote Sensing. Songlin Fei, professor of forestry and natural resources and Dean’s Chair of Remote Sensing; Joe Hupy, associate professor of aviation technology; and Jinha Jung, assistant professor of civil engineering
- Mar. 25 – Data in Produce Safety. Amanda Deering, clinical associate professor of food science, and Jennifer Crandall, CEO of Safe Food En Route, LLC
- Apr. 1 – Putting a Price on Data. Nathan DeLay, assistant professor of agricultural economics
- Apr. 8 – How Good is Deep-Learning for Weed Identification Using UAV-Imagery. Dharmendra Saraswat, associate professor of agricultural and biological engineering, and Varun Aggarwal, graduate student in agricultural and biological engineering
- Apr. 15 – Smarter Treatment of Livestock Disease. Mohit Verma, assistant professor of agricultural and biological engineering, and Aaron Ault, senior research engineer
- Apr. 22 – Practical Applications for UAVs. John Scott, Extension coordinator for digital agriculture
- Apr. 29 – IoT Networks: Sensors and Data Visualization. Nithin Raghunathan, research scientist, and Charilaos Mousoulis, senior research scientist
- May 6 – Public Data for the Public Good. Nicole Widmar, professor and associate head of agricultural economics
- May 13 – Machines and Robotics. John Evans, assistant professor of agricultural and biological engineering, and David Cappelleri, associate professor of mechanical engineering