Aishwarya Chandrasekaran believes that her home country of India has focused on industry and information technology to the detriment of agriculture — so she made plans to do something about it. “I decided I should contribute where I can, and I thought research in agriculture would be the key,” she says. Chandrasekaran is from the Indian state of Tamil Nadu, in the southern part of the country. Although the region is largely agricultural, “Aish” grew up in the capital city of Chennai, without much exposure to rural interests. But as an undergraduate at Anna University there, the developing field of remote sensing piqued her interest. She completed an internship in it, working with scientists who were “completely into agriculture and ecology,” she says. “I came to understand the importance of agriculture and its major role in everyone’s life, especially in developing countries.” After completing her degree, she sought out master’s degree programs in the United States. She identified Purdue Agriculture as one of the top U.S. programs and contacted a number of faculty members before discovering the best fit for her background and interests with Guofan Shao, professor of forest spatial analytics in the Department of Forestry and Natural Resources. She made her first trip to the United States and began a two-year program under Shao’s guidance in August 2018.