Speakers

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Plenary Speakers

Anderson, Daniel

Event Facilitator

Daniel Anderson is from a small ranching community in Southwest Montana. In 2017, he founded The Common Ground Project, an organization that curates retreats, workshops, and unique gatherings for people navigating cultural and environmental complexities of the Intermountain West. He provides facilitation and collaborative leadership services for communities and organizations throughout the West. Facilitation is a primary application of his professional skillsets, along with strategic planning, fundraising, team-building, and guiding retreats. Daniel has a B.S. in Construction Engineering Technology from Montana State University, an M.S. in Environmental Studies from University of Montana, and two professional certificates in facilitation from University of Montana and the Real Life Facilitation Program.

Bunje, Paul

Speaking in: Plenary II: AI to Drive Innovation, Plenary III: Practical Applications of AI across USDA Research
Speaker Bio: Paul Bunje is the co-founder and COO/CSO of Conservation X Labs. Paul was formerly the Chief Scientist at the XPRIZE Foundation, where he led the impact strategy across grand challenge domains at XPRIZE, spanning civil society, environment, energy, health, and exploration. Dr. Bunje is a global thought leader in bringing innovation to solve environmental grand challenges. Paul was formerly the founding Executive Director of the UCLA Center for Climate Change Solutions, the Managing Director of the Los Angeles Regional Collaborative for Climate Action and Sustainability, and served on the World Economic Forum’s Global Agenda Council for Oceans. The American Association for the Advancement of Science selected Paul as one of 40 individuals that exemplify the thousands of AAAS Science and Technology Policy Fellows who are dedicated to applying science to serve society. Paul is trained in biology, with a B.S. from the University of Southern California and a Ph.D. from the University of California, Berkeley.

Charles, Lauren

Speaking in: Plenary II AI to Drive Innovation
Speaker Bio: Dr. Lauren Charles is a Chief Data Scientist at Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL). She is a veterinarian with a multidisciplinary Data Scientist PhD, master’s in Plant Pathology, and bachelor’s in Mathematics/minor Environmental Science. Charles’ ongoing research integrates multimodal data, regarding the health of humans, society, animals, plants, and environment, into complex models advancing Biosurveillance, early warning, and risk assessment through a One Health (OH) approach. Her past research focused on wildlife population health, epidemiology, ecology, and the interface between wildlife, humans, domestic, and agricultural animals. Currently, Charles leads PNNL’s AI-Driven OH Security program, focusing on disrupting health threats and their impacts from local to global scales. PNNL’s leadership in operational AI and OH enables development of optimal health security platforms. Charles sits on the editorial board of multiple journals, serves as an advisor on Senator Gillibrand’s OH Security Council, and holds a professorship at Washington State University’s Paul Allen School for Global Health.

Chester, Dierdra

Speaking in: Plenary I: Welcome, Plenary IV: Agency Leadership on Policy and Practice
Speaker Bio: Dr. Deirdra Chester serves as the Director of the Office of the Chief Scientist (OCS). In this role, she leads OCS in delivering science and research that undergirds the policies and practices of USDA and its customers and stakeholders. Additionally, she steers collaboration activities for USDA science programs that support scientific excellence, innovation, and capacity to achieve the Department’s mission. Prior to this role, Dr. Chester was with the National Institute of Food and Agriculture (NIFA) were she served as the Division Director for the Division of Nutrition. In this role, she provided leadership and oversight for the Division’s research, education, and Extension activities across the nation through competitive grant programs. Previously, Dr. Chester was the agency Science Advisor for USDA’s Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service (APHIS). Before APHIS, she served as the National Program Leader for NIFA’s Applied Nutrition Research in the Division of Nutrition. Prior to joining NIFA, Dr. Chester was a scientist at USDA’s Agricultural Research Service. Additionally, Dr. Chester is a Registered Dietitian/Nutritionist. She has spoken both nationally and internationally on nutrition topics and is on the editorial board of the Journal of Obesity and Chronic Disease. Dr. Chester is an American University Key Executive Leadership program graduate and is SES certified through the USDA Senior Executive Service Candidate Development Program. Dr. Chester holds a Ph.D. in Nutrition from Florida International University, where she was awarded the McKnight Doctoral Fellowship and was in the inaugural class of the Gates Millennial Scholars. She also holds a master’s degree in food and nutrition science and a bachelor’s degree in nutrition and dietetics from Florida State University. Dr. Chester is the recipient of numerous honors and awards. The American Public Health Association Food and Nutrition Section awarded her the Mary C. Egan Award and she was recognized by Florida State University’s College of Human Science with the Circle of Excellence Alumni Award.

Diaz, Fredy

Speaking in: Plenary IV: Policy and Practice, AI Opportunities at Federal Agencies
Speaker Bio: Fredy Diaz serves as the Deputy Chief Data Officer at the U.S. Department of Agriculture. He is a data professional with over 15 years of experience in government operations and global supply chain operations. He has extensive experience in continuous process improvement initiatives, customer relationship management, data analytics, and integrating best business practices. He previously served as the Analytics Director and Data Analytics Manager at the U.S. Postal Service. He has experience in leading Federal employees, Marines, contractors and large projects/budgets.

Eve, Marlen

Speaking in: Plenary I: Welcome, Plenary V: Scientific Closing
Speaker Bio: Dr. Marlen Eve serves as the Deputy Administrator over the Natural Resources and Sustainable Agricultural Systems (NRSAS) program area at the USDA Agricultural Research Service, Office of National Programs. NRSAS provides strategic leadership of ARS research programs in water resources, soil and air quality, sustainability of our crop and livestock production systems, and the soil/plant/atmosphere interface. He previously served as a National Program Leader within NRSAS, overseeing research programs in soil and air, as well as pasture and rangeland resources. Dr. Eve also provides leadership as the Chair of the Executive Committee for the USDA Climate Hubs and as the USDA Research, Education and Economics (REE) Climate Adaptation research theme lead. Prior to joining ARS, Dr. Eve served as Senior Advisor for Climate Change in the USDA Office of the Chief Scientist, and directed the development of new tools for farm-scale estimation of greenhouse gas emissions and reductions within the Climate Change Program Office in USDA’s Office of the Chief Economist. Marlen has also been responsible for coordinating national level greenhouse gas inventories for agriculture and forestry. Earlier in his career, he was an ARS soil scientist in Fort Collins, where he generated the first national GHG inventory for agricultural soils using the IPCC methodology, subsequently serving as an IPCC author. Dr. Eve grew up on a dryland grain and livestock operation in north-central Montana, received his B.S. in Soil Resources from Montana State University and a Masters and Ph.D. from New Mexico State University using technology and modeling to study landscape dynamics and ecosystem health.

Fares, Ali

Speaking in: Plenary II: AI to Drive Innovation
Speaker Bio: Ali Fares is the Endowed Professor of Water Security and Water-Energy-Food Nexus College of Agriculture & Human Sciences, Prairie View A&M University. Dr. Fares specializes in water security, the water-energy-food nexus, and the impact of climate change using smart technologies and artificial intelligence tools and approaches to address these challenges. Fares has contributed to policies in Florida, Hawaii, and Texas, focusing on water allocation, bioenergy mandates, and climate-smart agriculture. He has mentored students, extension personnel, and faculty internationally, and testified before the U.S. House in 2022. Fares co-authored a chapter of the Fifth National Climate Assessment and is involved in national working groups, e.g., water security and climate change for U.S. agriculture. He has received several awards, including PVAMU Excellence in Research Award and the Irrigation Association National Water & Energy Conservation. Fares has secured over $100 million in funding and published +130 articles. He is the editor of Advances in Water Security and a fellow of the American Society of Agronomy and the Soil Science Society of America. Fares is a graduate of the University of Florida, where he earned his Ph.D. and M.S.

Hager, Gregory

Speaking in: Plenary II: AI: to Drive Innovation
Speaker Bio: Dr. Gregory Hager is the Assistant Director of the Directorate for Computer and Information Science and Engineering at the National Science Foundation. Hager is the Mandell Bellmore professor of computer science at Johns Hopkins University and founding director of the Johns Hopkins Malone Center for Engineering in Healthcare. His research spans many areas of artificial intelligence and machine learning, including activity recognition and detection from video data; collaborative and vision-based robotics; and medical applications of machine learning, image analysis and robotics. In addition to his contributions to vision and robotics, Hager is known for his pioneering work on the “language of surgery,” which formalized the study of the process of surgery from video and motion data. This work has led to numerous scientific publications and several patents and is now an integral part of the growing field of surgical data science. Hager has also participated in the founding of four startups, and he holds 39 patents in areas related to robotics, computer vision, human-robot interaction and medical applications of information technology.

Holmberg, Jason

Speaking in: Plenary II: AI to Drive Innovation
Speaker Bio: Dr. Jason Holmberg is the Chief Data Officer and Executive Director of Wild Me. Jason has logged thousands of hours of development time as Wild Me’s original Information Architect. Using Jason’s tools, our projects have been able to categorize and manage a large amount of wildlife data, promote collaboration across borders and data sets, and identify individual animals from multiple photos taken by different researchers many years apart. Jason was the lead author and population modeler for two widely lauded papers covering whale shark population trajectories at Ningaloo Marine Park in Western Australia. Through this, he demonstrated that citizen science data can provide improved insight and population models through the greater acquisition of high-quality data. Building on 20 years of experience in wildlife software, Jason now provides organizational leadership as Executive Director.

Ibrahim, Amir

Speaking in: Plenary V: Scientific Closing
Speaker Bio: Dr. Ibrahim is a professor and the project leader of the Small Grains Breeding program. His responsibilities include management of oat cultivar development for the entire state of Texas and wheat cultivars for South and Central Texas. Other responsibilities include procurement of grant funding, graduate student training, and conducting research relevant to wheat and oats genetic improvement. Dr. Ibrahim released and co-released 30 wheat and 3 oat cultivars. Dr. Ibrahim’s work relies on a statewide collaborative team approach that includes breeders, molecular geneticists, bioinformaticists, pathologists, physiologists, agronomists, economists, and end-use quality specialists. He also collaborates closely with USDA Agricultural Research Service scientists at Lincoln, Nebraska, Manhattan, Kansas, and St. Paul, Minnesota, and with public and private wheat breeders across the U.S. Great Plains and the Gulf and Atlantic regions. In addition, he collaborates with scientists at the International Center for Maize and Wheat Improvement (CIMMYT) and the International Center for Agricultural Research in the Dry Areas (ICARDA). He is currently involved in international collaborative research in Mexico, Australia, Sudan, Egypt, Turkey, Tunisia, and the Republic of Georgia. His current research interests include mapping of genes and quantitative trait loci (QTL) associated with biotic and abiotic stress tolerance, end-use quality characteristics, germplasm diversity and genetic distance, yield per se, and synthetic wheat. His specific research interests regarding hybrid wheat include developing tools and germplasm necessary for hybrid wheat production, including sterility mechanisms, heterotic pools, and the genomic information necessary for efficient prediction of hybrid performance. Dr. Ibrahim also works on high throughput phenotyping using UAS. Dr. Ibrahim has published 132 refereed journal articles, 40 Extension articles, 13 technical report and book chapters, and 116 abstracts.

Jacobs-Young, Chavonda

Speaking in: Plenary I: Welcome
Speaker Bio: Dr. Chavonda Jacobs-Young serves as the Under Secretary for Research, Education, and Economics (REE), and as USDA’s Chief Scientist. The REE mission area is comprised of more than 8,500 employees with a $4 billion budget across its five component organizations including the Agricultural Research Service (ARS), Economic Research Service (ERS), National Agricultural Statistics Service (NASS), National Institute of Food and Agriculture (NIFA), and Office of the Chief Scientist (OCS). Together these organizations advance agricultural research, innovation, data, and Extension across a full range of agricultural issues including climate-smart agriculture, nutrition security, equity, and strengthening food supply chains. As Chief Scientist, Dr. Jacobs-Young advises the Secretary of Agriculture and other senior officials on scientific matters and chairs the USDA Science Council, which convenes all parts of USDA’s scientific enterprise. Prior to being appointed by President Biden to serve as the REE Under Secretary, Dr. Jacobs-Young was Administrator for ARS from 2014 to 2022. Prior to that role, she served as ARS Associate Administrator for National Programs, leading the research objectives of the entire Agency. She also led the Office of International Research Programs, which is responsible for ARS’ liaison with its international partners. From 2009 to 2012, Dr. Jacobs-Young served as the inaugural OCS Director, where she was responsible for facilitating the coordination of scientific leadership across the Department to ensure that research supported by, and scientific advice provided to, the Department and external stakeholders were held to the highest standards of intellectual rigor and scientific integrity. She has also served as the Acting Director for NIFA and as a senior policy analyst for agriculture in the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy. Dr. Jacobs-Young is a native of Georgia. She holds M.S. and Ph.D. degrees in Wood and Paper Science and a B.S. degree in Pulp and Paper Science and Technology from North Carolina State University. She is a graduate of American University’s Key Executive Leadership in Public Policy Implementation Program, and a proud fellow of both the American Association for the Advancement of Science and the National Academy of Public Administration.

Kalavacharla, Venu

Speaking in: Plenary I: Welcome, Plenary IV: Agency Leadership on Policy and Practice, AI Opportunities at Federal Agencies, Plenary V: Scientific Closing
Speaker Bio: Dr. Venu (Kal) Kalavacharla is the Deputy Director of the Institute of Food Production and Sustainability at the National Institute of Food and Agriculture (NIFA). Prior to joining NIFA, he served as Associate Dean for Research and Professor of Plant Molecular Genetics and EpiGenomics in the College of Agriculture, Science and Technology at Delaware State University (DSU). Dr. Kalavacharla joined DSU as an assistant professor in 2006, became associate professor in 2009, and professor in 2014. Since 2009, he has served as the founding Director of the Center for Integrated Biological and Environmental Research at DSU. Dr. Kalavacharla is actively engaged in understanding and improving crop responses to abiotic and biotic stressors in plants by using tools and methods from classical genetics and breeding to genomics, transcriptomics, and epigenomics. He has secured more than $19 million in extramural grants to Delaware State University from the National Science Foundation (NSF) and the National Institute of Food and Agriculture (NIFA) and has experience in many crops including Brassicas, common bean, wheat, switchgrass, and salt marshgrass. Dr. Kalavacharla’s teaching interests include plant genetics and breeding, and molecular genetics and genomics. He also advises and mentors undergraduate and graduate students from DSU and the University of Delaware. Dr. Kalavacharla obtained a B.S. in Agricultural Sciences from Dr. Punjabrao Deshmukh Krishi Vidyapeeth (Agricultural University), India, an M.S. in Plant Science (research in Brassica Genetics, plant pathology) from the University of Manitoba, and a PhD in Plant Science from North Dakota State University (research in dry bean molecular genetics, plant pathology). He then worked as a postdoctoral research associate in the multi-institution collaborative U.S. Wheat EST Genomics Project (research on wheat expressed sequence tag mapping, wheat scab, and developmental biology). Dr. Kalavacharla then worked in industry in plant genomics, and taught majors and non-majors at Drexel University. He is passionate about experiential learning and developed a layered mentoring program for students and staff while in Delaware. Through NSF and NIFA funding, he has strived to bring together cohorts of students from diverse student populations and backgrounds so that they can thrive in an environment that supports and encourages them. Recently, Dr. Kalavacharla and colleagues developed a PhD program in Integrative Agricultural, Food and Environmental Sciences at Delaware State University to encourage inter- and multi-disciplinary research, training, and education aimed at developing today’s scientists who can work in academia, industry, or government.

Kerner, Hannah

Speaking in: Plenary II AI: to Drive Innovation
Speaker Bio: Hannah Kerner is an Assistant Professor in the School of Computing and Augmented Intelligence at Arizona State University. Her research focuses on advancing the foundations and applications of machine learning to foster a more sustainable, responsible, and fair future for all. As the AI Lead for NASA’s agriculture programs, NASA Harvest and NASA Acres, she is deploying research methods in real applications across the globe; her projects have directly resulted in optimized agricultural planning, disaster response, and financial relief in various regions around the world. The impact of Kerner’s research was recognized in Forbes 30 Under 30 and the International Research Centre On Artificial Intelligence’s Top 10 projects solving problems related to the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals with AI.

Klinck, Holger

Speaking in: Plenary II: AI to Drive Innovation
Speaker Bio: I am the John W. Fitzpatrick Director of the K. Lisa Yang Center for Conservation Bioacoustics at the Cornell Lab of Ornithology. I joined the Lab in December 2015 and took over the directorship of the Yang Center in August 2016. I am also a Faculty Fellow with the Atkinson Center for a Sustainable Future at Cornell University. In addition, I hold a Courtesy Professor position at Oregon State University (OSU). Before moving to the U.S. in early 2008 for a postdoctoral position at OSU, I was a Ph.D. student at the Alfred Wegener Institute for Polar and Marine Research in Germany. My graduate work focused on the development of the Perennial Acoustic Observatory in the Antarctic Ocean and the study of the leopard seal (coolest animal ever!) vocal behavior. My current research focuses on the development and application of hard- and software tools for passive-acoustic monitoring of terrestrial and marine ecosystems and biodiversity. One of my goals is to enable researchers around the globe to acoustically monitor habitats and wildlife at large spatial scales. I am also studying the impacts of anthropogenic noise on the vocal and locomotive behavior of animals. I am a full member of the Acoustical Society of America (ASA) and the moderator of the popular Bioacoustics-L mailing list, which is hosted by the Yang Center. I am a manuscript referee for the Journal of the Acoustical Society of America, Marine Ecology Progress Series, Aquatic Mammals, Canadian Journal of Zoology, Ecological Informatics, Proceedings of the Royal Society B, Animal Behaviour, Animal Biotelemetry, Deep-Sea Research Part I, Polar Biology, Biology Letters, Plos ONE, Acoustics Australia, New Zealand Journal of Ecology, Nature Communications, PeerJ, IEEE Ocean Engineering, Sensors, Mammal Research, Scientific Reports, Methods in Ecology and Evolution, and Landscape Ecology. I am also refereeing proposals for NSF, National Geographic, NOAA, Seagrant New Hampshire, and the US Navy’s Living Marine Resources Program (LMR). I advise several undergraduates, graduate students, and postdocs at Cornell and OSU and I am regularly teaching national and international bioacoustics classes. I am an avid college and professional sports fan. My hobbies include running, sailing, and tinkering with gadgets. My wife Karolin and I live in Lansing, New York. I enjoy hiking with our two Australian shepherd dogs, Lilly and Sammy, and our miniature dachshund Marvin.

Liu, George

Speaking in: Plenary III: Practical Applications of AI Across the USDA Research Portfolio
Speaker Bio: Ge (George) Liu is a Research Biologist at the Animal Genomics and Improvement Laboratory in Beltsville, MD. His general research interest is in comparative and functional genomic research related to animal health and agriculture production using bioinformatics and experimental techniques.

Liu, Simon

Speaking in: Plenary I Welcome, Plenary IV: Agency Leadership on Policy and Practice, AI Opportunities at Federal Agencies
Speaker Bio: Dr. Simon Liu is the Administrator of the Agricultural Research Service (ARS). As ARS Administrator, Liu and his senior leadership team administer more than 660 research projects spread across four National Program Areas. These research projects are conducted by 2,000 scientists and post-doctoral researchers assigned to 90-plus research locations nationwide, including a few laboratories overseas. Prior to holding this position, Liu was the Associate Administrator for the agency’s Research Management and Operations for more than seven years. He first joined ARS in 2010 as Director of the National Agricultural Library (NAL), which houses the world’s largest collections devoted to agriculture and related sciences. Before joining ARS, Liu served as Associate Director of the National Library of Medicine (NLM) and Director of the NLM Computer and Communications System. Prior to his service at NLM, he held leadership positions with the U.S. Departments of Justice and Treasury, following work in the private sector where he led information system development and space mission studies to support NASA mission and operations. Liu attended university in his native Taiwan and pursued graduate studies in the United States, where he earned master’s degrees in Computer Science, Business Administration and Government from Indiana University, the University of Maryland and Johns Hopkins University. He also earned two doctoral degrees: an Ed.D. in Higher Education Administration and a Ph.D. in Computer Science from George Washington University.

Lu, Renfu

Speaking in: Plenary III: Practical Applications of AI Across the USDA Research Portfolio
Speaker Bio: Dr. Renfu Lu is a Research Agricultural Engineer and the Research Leader at the Sugarbeet and Bean Research Unit of the Agricultural Research Service. Dr. Lu received his M.S. and Ph.D. degrees in Agricultural Engineering from Cornell University and Pennsylvania State University, respectively. He has a B.S. degree in Engineering specializing in Agricultural Machinery from Zhejiang Agricultural University (now Zhejiang University) in China. Dr. Lu has begun his research career as an agricultural engineer with USDA-ARS since 1994. He has been a lead scientist since 1999 and research leader for the research unit since 2007. Dr. Lu has also served as an adjunct faculty with the Department of Biosystems and Agricultural Engineering at Michigan State University in East Lansing, Michigan. Prior to joining USDA-ARS, he was a research associate and then a research assistant professor with the Department of Biological and Agricultural Engineering at University of Arkansas in Fayetteville, Arkansas. Dr. Renfu Lu’s research is focused on development of innovative automation and sensing technologies for harvest and nondestructive quality assessment of horticultural crops to help growers and processors achieve labor and production cost savings and enhance product postharvest quality and marketability. His research directly contributes to National Program 306 – Product Quality and New Uses, and also supports National Program 305 – Crop Production. Dr. Lu has authored or co-authored more than 150 peer-reviewed journal articles, four patents (three pending), and 17 book chapters and edited/co-edited two technical books. Dr. Lu has been credited for his pioneering research and outstanding technology transfer efforts in the development and application of hyperspectral imaging technology for food quality and safety inspection, which has been considered one of the most significant emerging technologies in the field over the past 25 years.

Misra, Manjit

Speaking in: Plenary I Welcome, AI Opportunities at Federal Agencies
Speaker Bio: Dr. Manjit Misra is the director of the USDA National Institute of Food and Agriculture, USDA’s extramural funding agency in the Research, Education and Economics Mission Area. Dr. Misra is a world-renowned scientist who has had a transformational impact on food security through the application of engineering principles to seeds, the most vital and fundamental element of food security. Prior to joining NIFA, he was the director of the Seed Science Center at Iowa State University, a position he held from 1991 to 2023. He also was the Endowed Chair of Seed Science, Technology and Systems. Dr. Misra was the 2018 recipient of the Sukup Global Food Security Award for his distinguished contributions to global food security through research, outreach and teaching in post-harvest seed science, technology and policy. His interdisciplinary and collaborative approach to leadership has been effective at state, national and international levels. He has been a member of the American Society of Agricultural and Biological Engineers for 37 years. He is a past chair of the National Genetic Resources Advisory Council with the USDA. Dr. Misra is author or coauthor of 137 publications and co-inventor on 10 patents. Throughout his career, Dr. Misra has received numerous awards, including the Distinguished Service Award for Leadership, Vision and Exemplary Service to the U.S. Seed Industry from the American Seed Trade Association. He received the Outstanding Achievement in International Agriculture Award from Iowa State University. He also received the Global Academic Leadership Award from the Indian Council of Food and Agriculture. After earning a Bachelor of Science degree in agricultural engineering from Orissa University of Agriculture and Technology in India, Dr. Misra earned a master’s degree and a Ph.D. in agricultural engineering from the University of Missouri. He joined the faculty of Iowa State University in 1979 as an assistant professor in seed science and technology. In 2005, he was named director of Iowa State’s Institute for Food Safety and Security and was the founding director of the Biosafety Institute for Genetically Modified Agricultural Products. Dr. Misra was sworn in to a six-year appointment as Director of the USDA National Institute of Food and Agriculture on May 8, 2023.

Parsons, Joe

Speaking in: AI Opportunities at Federal Agencies
Speaker Bio: Joseph L. Parsons is the Administrator of USDA’s National Agricultural Statistics Service. Mr. Parsons leads NASS to provide the agricultural statistics that form a comprehensive, timely and accurate picture of US agriculture. The Agency’s portfolio of reports encompasses more than 400 releases each year in addition to the Census of Agriculture conducted every five years. Parsons works with the NASS Senior Executive Team to improve and enhance the agency’s statistical programs serving all stakeholders while working to ensure NASS is an exemplary employer. Since beginning his federal career in 1985, Parsons has held various roles and responsibilities at NASS. Prior to his appointment as Administrator, Parsons served as Associate Administrator with responsibility for the oversight and coordination of agency operations and statistical programs. Parsons other senior executive roles include serving as chair of USDA’s Agricultural Statistics Board and director of the NASS Methodology Division as well as serving as NASS Chief Information Officer. Parsons’ service has also included serving as chief data officer, senior research statistician, and providing leadership in multiple field offices. Parsons was appointed to the Senior Executive Service in 2011 after completing USDA’s Senior Executive Candidate Development Program and American University’s Key Executive Leadership Certificate Program. As part of his leadership training, he served a detail as visiting executive at Statistics Canada. Parsons graduated from the University of Missouri-Columbia with honors in Agricultural Economics and earned a master’s degree from the University of Maryland-College Park in Survey Methodology. He grew up on the family dairy farm in southwestern Missouri and worked on several farming operations throughout high school and college.

Prusacki, Joseph

Speaking in: Plenary I Welcome
Speaker Bio: Mr. Joseph Prusacki is the Associate Administrator of NASS. He previously served as the director of NASS’s National Operations Division in St. Louis, MO. He grew up on a small crop and hog farm in Perry County, Illinois. He holds a Bachelor of Science and Master of Science degrees in Agribusiness-Economics from Southern Illinois University-Carbondale, and a Master of Science in Applied Statistics from Purdue University. Prusacki began his NASS career in 1984, working in the Tennessee and then Indiana field offices. In 1992, he transferred to Washington, D.C. where he held several positions at NASS headquarters, and worked on a wide range of surveys as well as the Census of Agriculture. In 2004, he was named chief of the NASS Crops Branch. In this capacity, he served as a permanent member of the Agriculture Statistics Board and was responsible for the NASS crop statistics estimation program, which includes the monthly and annual Crop Production, quarterly Grain Stocks, Prospective Plantings and Acreage reports. His duties included presenting the monthly Crop Production report briefings to the Secretary of Agriculture. In 2006, Prusacki transferred to Des Moines, Iowa to become director of the Iowa Field Office. He returned to Washington in April 2008 to join the Senior Executive Service team as Statistics Division director. During his tenure in that position, ProFarmer magazine named Prusacki their 2010 Ag Person of the Year. In March 2014, Prusacki became the director of NASS’s National Operations Division. Prusacki is a 2004 graduate of the USDA’s Senior Executive Service Candidate Development Program and was detailed to the President’s Council of Economic Advisors from November 2003 to March 2004.

Savell, Jeff

Speaking in: Plenary I Welcome
Speaker Bio: Dr. Jeff Savell is the Vice Chancellor and Dean for Agriculture and Life Sciences at Texas A&M University. Dr. Jeff Savell began serving as the vice chancellor and dean for Agriculture and Life Sciences at The Texas A&M University System in June 2022. As vice chancellor and dean, he serves on the Texas A&M University System Executive Committee, which provides the chancellor assessment, advice and recommendations on issues within the A&M System and the System Offices. The 16-person committee also aids the Board of Regents in implementing and overseeing strategic plans and policies. He has been part of Texas A&M for more than 50 years — as an undergraduate student, graduate student, Texas A&M AgriLife Extension Service specialist, faculty member at Texas A&M, and finally as vice chancellor and dean. He is a University Distinguished Professor, Regents Professor and E.M. “Manny” Rosenthal Chairholder in the Department of Animal Science at Texas A&M University. Dr. Savell finds inspiration in advancing the next generation and continues to teach. He has taught more than 13,000 undergraduates and mentored more than 170 graduate students in their research. In his time as vice chancellor and dean, freshman enrollment in the Texas A&M College of Agriculture and Life Sciences has grown by 40%. He also established the largest scholarship campaign in the College’s history, the Dean’s Excellence Scholars.

Stefanou, Spiro

Speaking in: Plenary I Welcome, AI Opportunities at Federal Agencies
Speaker Bio: Dr. Spiro Stefanou is the Administrator of the Economic Research Service. He provides leadership and guidance for the agency research, analytical, and technical operations. Since 2015, Dr. Stefanou was a Professor and Chair in the Food and Resource Economics Department at the University of Florida. Dr. Stefanou’s research activities address themes of competitiveness and growth, and related policy implications. His research revolves around how firms make decisions when current decisions impact future production possibilities. How firms choose to adopt effective technologies and their capabilities to extract the maximum potential from these technologies is a key feature of these frameworks. These investigations also address investment and innovation patterns, firm learning, and capacity utilization. The policy stories associated with the dynamic capabilities and productivity have wide interest since growth can come from firms wasting fewer resources or adapting their size to extract the full potential of technologies in place, and/or firms looking to push the technological envelope. Prior to his time at the University of Florida, Dr. Stefanou was Professor of Agricultural Economics at Penn State University since 1983 and maintained a part-time appointment as a Professor in the Business Economics Group at Wageningen University (Netherlands). Dr. Stefanou received his Ph.D. in Agricultural Economics from the University of California, Davis, his M.S. in Agricultural and Resource Economics from the University of Maryland and a Bachelor of Arts in Anthropology from George Washington University.

Watson, Michael

Speaking in: Plenary I Welcome
Speaker Bio: Dr. Michael Watson was appointed the Administrator of the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service in December 2023 after serving as Acting Administrator for 10 months. As Administrator, Dr. Watson carries out the Agency’s multiple missions of protecting the health and value of American agriculture; mitigating the impact of human-wildlife conflict to protect agriculture, the environment, and human health and safety; ensuring the safe and timely availability of new genetically engineered technologies; and administering the Animal Welfare and Horse Protection Acts. Before being named as Acting Administrator, Dr. Watson served as Associate Administrator since January 2018 where he oversaw the Agency’s day-to-day operations. Prior to joining the Administrator’s office, Dr. Watson served as the Associate Deputy Administrator for the Marketing and Regulatory Programs Business Services (MRPBS), where he also spent time as the Director of the Human Resources Division, leading the delivery of human resource services for APHIS, the Agricultural Marketing Service, the Foreign Agricultural Service, and the Merit Systems Protection Board. Dr. Watson has a wealth of Federal experience having worked for several different Departments. He began his federal career in 1994 at USDA’s Agricultural Research Service where he worked as a plant pathologist for three years. He went on to hold positions with the Environmental Protection Agency and the Food and Drug Administration, before beginning his APHIS career with Biotechnology Regulatory Services in 2003. After serving in several BRS roles over 7 years, Dr. Watson moved to Plant Protection and Quarantine where he served as the Associate Executive Director and Executive Director for Plant Health Programs and the Associate Deputy Administrator for Policy Management during his 5 years with the program. Dr. Watson received his bachelor’s degree in microbiology from the University of Maryland, College Park in 1987 and his doctorate in plant pathology from the University of California, Davis in 1994.

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Session Speakers

Abreu, Denise

Speaking in: Collaboration and Education
Speaker Bio: Denise Abreu has been a Mathematical Statistician serving within the Federal Statistical System for over 25 years. She obtained a double degree: a B.S. in Applied Mathematics & Statistics and a B.A. in Spanish Languages and Literature from the State University of New York at Stony Brook. Later, she obtained her Masters in Survey Methodology from the University of Maryland. Mrs. Abreu’s background has allowed her to work on a number of research projects, including efforts to improve the Census of Agriculture, the June Area Survey and NASS’s List and Area Frames. Her current research focuses on capture-recapture methodology and the use of web-scraping in list frame development. As Deputy Directory in the Research and Development Division, she leads a staff comprised of over 25 highly qualified Mathematical Statisticians, Data Scientists, Survey Statisticians, Geographers, and Cartographers.

Adve, Vikram S.

Speaking in: Applied Tools
Speaker Bio: Vikram Adve received his B.Tech degree in Electrical Engineering from IIT Bombay and his MS and PhD degrees in Computer Science from the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Adve is the Donald B. Gillies Professor of Computer Science at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, and a cofounder and Co-Director of the Center for Digital Agriculture at UIUC. He leads AIFARMS, a national AI Institute funded by USDA NIFA that is developing and using novel AI techniques to address important challenges faced by world agriculture. The primary areas of Adve’s current research are in machine learning techniques and tools for digital agriculture, compiler and system support for heterogeneous edge computing, approximate computing, and programmability for edge applications. Adve founded and leads the CropWizard project within AIFARMS. Adve and his Ph.D. student, Chris Lattner, co-designed the LLVM Compiler Infrastructure, which is widely used in both research and industry, including Apple, Google, Qualcomm, Intel, NVIDIA, Sony, and many others. Adve, Lattner and Evan Cheng received the ACM Software System Award in 2012 for co-developing LLVM. Two of Adve’s other Ph.D. students have won the ACM SIGPLAN Outstanding Dissertation Award and Honorable Mention for the ACM Doctoral Dissertation Award. Adve is a Fellow of the ACM and was named a University Scholar at the University of Illinois in 2015.

Ahuja, Narendra

Speaking in: Future Trends: Multimodal Learning
Speaker Bio: Narendra Ahuja is a Research Professor and formerly Donald Biggar Willet Professor at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign in Departments of Electrical and Computer Engineering, Computer Science, and Coordinated Science Laboratory. His research is in computer vision and machine learning, on integrated use of multiple sources of scene information including images, videos, audio and text to extract and represent spatiotemporal structure of scenes, construct three-dimensional and other descriptions, texture modeling, visual motion understanding, image and video synthesis, sensors for computer vision, explainable efficient learning architectures, and applications including visual communication, image manipulation, healthcare, agriculture, railroads and navigation. He has co-authored three books, published about 500 journal and conference papers, and holds four patents. He has graduated 80 graduate and 100 undergraduate research students. His algorithms have been used by companies like General Electric, CMC, Honeywell, Westinghouse, and Advanced Technology, some incorporated into products. He is the founding director of the first of the IIITs in India, and the founding director of the Information Technology Research Academy in India. He has received several awards from and is a fellow of IEEE, ACM, AAAI, IAPR, AAAS and SPIE.

Arnold, Haley

Speaking in: Lightning Talk Session II
Speaker Bio: Haley Arnold is an ORISE-funded postdoc working with Dr. Sheina Sim at the Pacific Basin Agricultural Research Unit in Hilo, Hawaii. Her current research focuses on using artificial intelligence to improve accuracy in variant calling, which has become a foundational part of most modern genetic studies. She is using DeepVariant, a sequence variant caller developed by Google that uses a convolutional neural network, to develop protocols for model training in non-model systems. She will explore the effects of varying amounts of training data, different sequencing technology, and using a spectrum of related species. Her prior work as a PhD student was at Binghamton University in central New York, where she studied evolutionary genetics in monkeyflowers.

Avila, Angela

Speaking in: Lightning Talk Session II
Speaker Bio: Dr. Angela Avila earned her Ph.D. in Mathematics from the University of Texas at Arlington this summer, with a focus on applied mathematical modeling. She began her work with USDA in 2018 under the USDA NIFA HSI-funded ‘Alliance for Smart Agriculture in the Internet of Things Era’ grant. Currently, she is a postdoctoral researcher at UT Arlington, working with USDA ARS in New Orleans under Dr. Lina Castano-Duque, where she focuses on generating input features to model Mycotoxin outbreaks in the U.S.

Barnaby, Jinyoung

Speaking in: Computer Vision : Foreign Objects, Invasives, and Pathogens
Speaker Bio: Dr. Jinyoung (Jin) Barnaby is a Research Geneticist with the USDA, ARS, at the U.S. National Arboretum, where she focuses on advancing turfgrass germplasm through AI-based high-throughput phenotyping and genotyping to enhance ecosystem services. Since 2021, she has led research initiatives to integrate these technologies effectively in turfgrass improvement. Prior to this role, she served as a Research Physiologist at the Dale Bumpers National Rice Research Center, working on rice germplasm enhancement using similar technologies. Dr. Barnaby holds a Ph.D. from Duke University and an M.S. from Seoul National University in South Korea. With a strong research background in plant interactions with biotic and abiotic factors, she completed her postdoctoral training at the USDA, ARS, Adaptive Cropping Systems Laboratory, where she studied crop responses to changing climates.

Benke, Ryan

Speaking in: Modeling II
Speaker Bio: Ryan Benke (he/him) earned a B.S. in biology, chemistry, and psychology from the University of Jamestown in Jamestown, ND in the spring of 2015. That fall, he began graduate studies at Purdue University where he completed a Ph.D. in Biochemistry in 2022 under the guidance of Dr. Brian Dilkes. During his Ph.D. work, Ryan investigated the genetic causes and metabolic perturbations associated with the plant hypersensitive response and spontaneous cell death mutants. Following his Ph.D., he joined the USDA as a postdoctoral researcher with Dr. Xianran Li at Washington State University in Pullman, WA, where he currently resides. In his postdoctoral role, Ryan is developing AI-based models that learn associations between phenotypic variation and environmental conditions, enabling predictions of future performance. Outside of research, Ryan enjoys improv shows, attending sporting events, and is an avid runner.

Berkheimer, Ryan

Speaking in: Data Integration and AI in Knowledge Management - a soil carbon use case
Speaker Bio: Ryan is a physical scientist at the National Centers for Environmental Information (NCEI) at NOAA and currently serves as the Chief Architect of the NOAA cloud archive. In 2021, Ryan released the Digital Twin Earth Framework Specification (DTE-FS), which has been foundational in driving conceptual advancements both at NOAA and other agency and interagency planning and development efforts in moving toward an interoperable and user driven federated earth systems digital twins ecosystem, including the NASA Earth Systems Digital Twins (ESDT) framework. Ryan enjoys working with internal and external NOAA partners to advance interoperability efforts. He is a member and/or lead of multiple working groups at organizations including OGC, CEOS, NSF TIP and CISE, ESIP, IEEE, and others. Ryan studied physics at Case Western Reserve University and his career spans multiple agencies and domains including regulatory hydrology, land reclamation, energy physics, enterprise GIS, systems engineering, and software architecture.

Blackstock, Joshua M.

Speaking in: Soil Science Applications
Speaker Bio: Dr. Joshua Blackstock received a bachelor’s degree in Geology and a Minor in Environmental Geology from the University of Arkansas-Little Rock, a Masters with First Class Honours from the University of Canterbury in Geological Sciences, and a PhD from the University of Arkansas-Fayetteville in Geosciences. Prior to joining the Dale Bumpers Small Farms Research Center, he was a postdoc at the University of Arkansas Department of Geosciences investigating groundwater affects surface water inundation and flood duration in agricultural areas of southeast Missouri using geospatial, geophysical, and geochemical approaches. His research interests involve the use of water chemistry, physical monitoring of water features, and geographical information systems (GIS) to model the variability of natural systems, e.g. soil, surface water, groundwater, with particular emphasis on the determining the fate of nutrients within agricultural systems and the broader Earth System. Through his research Dr. Blackstock aims to increase the knowledge and efficiency of using geochemistry and geospatial data to inform soil and water management and conservation on farms.

Burns, Amira

Speaking in: Lightning Talk Session II
Speaker Bio: Amira Burns is a SCINet Fellow with the USDA Agricultural Research Service based at the US Range Sheep Production Efficiency Research Unit at the US Experimental Sheep Station in Dubois, Idaho. She earned a Masters in Applied Statistics from Colorado State University in 2022, when she began working on the CameraTrapDetector project on a join ARS / APHIS initiative. Her research interests lie at the intersection of coproduced technology to support Western ecosystems, researchers, and communities. She loves hiking or skiing in the mountains to check camera traps.

Cadle-Davidson, Lance

Speaking in: Lightning Talk Session I, Robotics and Sensors
Speaker Bio: Dr. Lance Cadle-Davidson is a Research Plant Pathologist at the USDA-ARS Grape Genetics Research Unit in Geneva, NY, co-located with Cornell AgriTech. For the past two decades in this position, he has studied the genetics of grapevine interactions with fungal and oomycete pathogens, primarily focused on host resistance to grapevine powdery mildew. Since 2011, Dr. Cadle-Davidson has co-led the USDA NIFA-funded VitisGen project, which provides technological innovations and centralized expertise to grape breeders across the U.S.

Campbell, Jacqueline

Speaking in: Future Trends: Large Language Models
Speaker Bio: Dr. Jacqueline Campbell is a Geneticist within the USDA-Agricultural Research Service, working as a data curator at SoyBase the USDA database for soybean crop improvement. Before joining the USDA, Dr. Campbell conducted multiple computational biology projects during her time as a PhD and post doc focusing on plant genomics and genetics. As a data curator at SoyBase, Dr. Campbell extracts knowledge within a published manuscript from unstructured data into a structured, human and machine-readable form. As a geneticist, Dr. Campbell revaluates public data to enhance genome annotations and variant calling.

Castano-Duque, Lina

Speaking in: Modeling I
Speaker Bio: Dr. Lina Castano-Duque earned her PhD in plant biology from the Pennsylvania State University where she studied plant-insect interactions under Dr. Dawn Luthe’s mentorship. She did a post-doctoral research experience as a National Science foundation fellow at Duke University studying rice and flooding with Dr. Thomas Mitchell-Olds in collaboration with the International Rice Research Institute (IRRI). In 2021, she became a permanent scientist with USDA-ARS at the New Orleans location in the Food and Feed Safety research studying plant-fungal interactions, and mycotoxin accumulation in corn.

Chatterjee, Amitava

Speaking in: Soil Science Applications
Speaker Bio: I am a research soil scientist in the Soil, Water, and Air Unit of the ARS National Laboratory for Agriculture and the Environment (NLAE). My research area is focused on soil nutrient dynamics in agroecosystem. I obtained my graduate degree in Agriculture and Master in Soil Science from India. I completed my doctoral degree from University of Wyoming in 2007. I held couple of postdoc positions at The Ohio State University, University of California-Riverside, and Washington State University before joining as a faculty at North Dakota State University in 2011. Before ARS at Ames, I worked for a year as a research soil scientist at National Sedimentation Lab, Oxford, MS. Besides my career, I enjoy reading, watching movies and cooking.

Chen, Jianchi

Speaking in: Genomics I
Speaker Bio: Jianchi Chen is a Research Plant Pathologist with the Crop Diseases, Pests, and Genetics Research Unit at the San Joaquin Valley Agricultural Sciences Center. They earned MS/PhD degrees in Plant Pathology from the University of Georgia, Athens. Their research has mostly been focusing on characterization of fastidious plant pathogenic prokaryotes using in vitro culture, molecular biology and genomic tools. They have extensively studied strains of two bacteria: Xylella fastidiosa, causing leaf scorch diseases in agricultural crops, and “Candidatus Liberibacter asiaticus”, associated with citrus Huanglongbing (HLB), and established a new species Xylella taiwanensis. Other research interests include Spiroplasma spp., “Candidatus Phytoplasma spp.”, “Candidatus Liberibacter solanacearum”, and mitogenomes of pathogenic fungi and insect vectors through genomics/metagenomics and machine learning approaches.

Chowdhury, Ratul

Speaking in: Lightning Talk Session I
Speaker Bio: Ratul Chowdhury is an Assistant Professor and Black and Veatch Building a World of Difference Faculty Fellow at Iowa State University. He earned a BE in Chemical Engineering from Jadavpur University, India and a PhD in Chemical Engineering from Penn State University. He heads the Chowdhury Lab within the Nanovaccine Institute and affiliated to the Chemical & Biological Engineering department at ISU, designing novel proteins using structure-aware AI/optimization models. These designed proteins find application in energy, environment, therapeutics, and critical ionic separations.

Colantonio, Vincent

Speaking in: Genomics II
Speaker Bio: Dr. Vincent Colantonio is a Research Molecular Biologist at the USDA-ARS Plant, Soil, and Nutrition Research Unit in Ithaca, NY. He received his PhD from the University of Florida working on the implementation of AI algorithms in plant breeding programs. His current research focuses on the development of genomic resources and computational tools for mining genetic variation in crop wild relatives. He leverages these resources to study how agronomically important traits evolve in wild plant populations and how to efficiently introgress useful variation into modern commercial breeding materials, with a primary focus on crop nutritional quality.

Copeland, Duan

Speaking in: Lightning Talk Session I
Speaker Bio: Dr. Duan Copeland is a Post-Doctoral Research Microbiologist at the USDA-ARS Carl Hayden Bee Research Center in Tucson, Arizona. Following twelve years of service in the U.S. Army, he completed his B.S. in Microbiology and Veterinary Science, P.S.M. in Applied Biosciences, and Ph.D. in Microbiology from the University of Arizona. His research focuses on host-microbial interactions in honey bees and how these microbial communities influence queen, worker, and colony metrics through nutrition, immunity, disease resistance, and aging. His work has revealed how microbiome composition relates to honey bee development and longevity. Dr. Copeland combines traditional microbiological techniques with cutting-edge molecular approaches, including next-generation sequencing and machine learning applications. His current work includes developing image-based AI solutions for honey bee brood disease diagnostics while also continuing to explore the intersection of microbiome dynamics with bee health development.

Duarte, Efrain

Speaking in: Computer Vision II
Speaker Bio: I am computational agronomist, engineer, and scientist working on solutions for forest, soil, water resources and climate. My research aims to aid practical decision-making by improving environmental information to measure and monitor critical soil-plant-water systems and their impacts at local and landscape scales. To this end, I develop scalable computational approaches for high spatial and spectral resolution environmental prediction using satellite and UAV remote sensing, land surface modeling, high-performance computing, machine learning, and data fusion. Currently, I am a postdoctoral researcher at the Agricultural Research Service (ARS) Forage and Range Research Laboratory (FRRL), United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) under the SCINet Program and ARS Center of Excellence in Artificial Intelligence, Office of National Programs.

Edwards, Jeremy

Speaking in: Protein Structure Prediction Applications
Speaker Bio: Jeremy Edwards is a Research Geneticist at the ARS Dale Bumpers National Rice Research Center in Stuttgart, Arkansas.

Feldman, Max

Speaking in: Food Science Applications
Speaker Bio: Dr. Max Feldman is a Research Geneticist with the USDA-ARS focused on potato germplasm enhancement. A majority of this work is focused on introgression of disease resistance loci and other beneficial alleles from wild or primitive germplasm and the development of marketable potato varieties. Dr. Feldman possesses nearly 20 years of agricultural research experience primarily focused on using forward and reverse genetics to better understand the mechanisms underlying plant traits. Much of this work has focused on development of improved measurement strategies (image analysis, analytical chemistry) in combination with high-throughput genotyping and bioinformatic analysis to extract knowledge from large public datasets. Ultimately, our primary objective is to utilize the power of quantitative genetics to breed more profitable and sustainable potato varieties for our stakeholders in the Pacific Northwest and farmers around the globe.

Fenster, Jacob

Speaking in: Disease Transmission Applications

Fern, Alan

Speaking in: Systems-Level Applications
Speaker Bio: Alan Fern is a Professor of Computer Science in the School of EECS at Oregon State University (OSU). He received his Ph.D. (2004) in Computer Engineering from Purdue University, and his B.S. (1997) in Electrical Engineering from the University of Maine. His research interests span a variety of topics in Artificial Intelligence and Robotics with a particular emphasis on building systems that can learn from experience. He directs the Dynamic Robotics and AI Laboratory (DRAIL) which studies AI for enabling humanoid robots to perform real-world work. He is also the OSU lead PI for the AgAID AI Institute led by Washington State University.

Frazier, Anthony Nathan

Speaking in: Lightning Talk Session I
Speaker Bio: Dr. Anthony Nathan Frazier graduated from Colorado State University in 2021 earning his doctoral degree in Animal Science. In 2015, he graduated from Auburn University in 2015 with a Master’s Degree in Poultry Science and from Auburn University over Montgomery in 2013 with a Bachelor’s Degree of Science. He spent time as a Postdoctoral Research Associate (2021-2023) with Texas A&M University Veterinary Medical Diagnostic Laboratory and is currently a Postdoctoral Fellow with the USDA-ARS Conservation and Production Research Laboratory in Bushland, TX. His lab primarily focuses on investigating the microbiome of animal and agriculture systems. Past work has investigated the role of the early life microbiome of dairy calves in disease susceptibility, and the microbiome of a newly built meat processing plant to understand how Listeria spp. establishes and persists. His current research interests include investigating the role of the ruminant microbiome in greenhouse gas emissions to address climate change.

Ganapathysubramanian, Baskar

Speaking in: Future Trends: Multimodal Learning
Speaker Bio: Dr. Baskar Ganapathysubramanian is the Joseph C. and Elizabeth A. Anderlik Professor in Engineering and Professor of Mechanical Engineering at Iowa State University. He earned is MS and PhD in Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering from Cornell University. His research interests include Computational physics, Computational mechanics (fluid mechanics and heat transfer), Stochastic analysis, Uncertainty quantification and propagation, Multiscale modeling, control and optimization of complex systems, Materials-by-design, Parallel computing and inverse problems.

Gillette, Shana

Speaking in: Lightning Talk Session II
Speaker Bio: Shana Gillette is a behavioral scientist within USDA-APHIS Veterinary Services who serves as a technical expert on the social dimensions of veterinary epidemiology with a focus on identifying and minimizing behavioral barriers to stakeholder access of VS programs and processes.

Guidry-Stanteen, Sean

Speaking in: Modeling I
Speaker Bio: Dr. Sean Guidry Stanteen earned his PhD in applied mathematics at the University of Texas at Arlington, where he has taken a post-doctoral research position performing data visualization on soil organic carbon.

Haag, Shawn

Speaking in: Collaboration and Education
Speaker Bio: Shawn Haag is Executive Director of AI-CLIMATE, a National AI USDA/NIFA Research Institute for Climate-Land Interactions, Mitigation, Adaptation, Tradeoffs, and Economy. With over 15 years of experience in leading and delivering strategic, innovative, and impactful solutions across diverse domains and platforms, Shawn is passionate about applying AI to address the complex and urgent challenges of agriculture resiliency, climate change, and sustainable agriculture. My core competencies include program management, AI, stakeholder and partnership development, and collaborative leadership. I have leveraged these skills in various roles and projects, such as developing a Data Strategy Plan at RSM, crafting product roadmaps for UX Technology at Meta, scaling research programs at the University of Minnesota, and co-founding Exergi Predictive, a startup that pioneers energy management solutions. At AI-CLIMATE, I lead the planning and execution of activities across all strategic objectives, facilitate strategic partnerships with diverse external entities, and work with a talented team of researchers, partners, and stakeholders to advance AI applications for climate-land outcomes.

Hernandez, Alexander

Speaking in: Sustainability

Hogland, John

Speaking in: Applied Tools, Plenary III: Practical Applications of AI Across the USDA Research Portfolio
Speaker Bio: Dr. Hogland is a Research Forester working for the Rocky Mountain Research Station. His research interests revolve around quantitative methods within geographic information systems (GIS) and understanding the relationships between landscape patterns and forested ecosystems processes. Current projects include: 1) quantifying forest characteristics at fine spatial scales, 2) designing, developing, and building new procedures that integrate machine learning and statistical modeling with fast raster processing (Function Modeling) to streamline spatial modeling and reduce storage space associated with GIS analyses, and 3) developing sampling strategies focused on reducing the cost of sampling while maintaining the characteristics of a representative sample.

Holt, Greg

Speaking in: Computer Vision : Foreign Objects, Invasives, and Pathogens
Speaker Bio: Greg Holt graduated from Texas A&M University with degrees in Agricultural Engineering – BS and MS (1986 and 1989), and from Texas Tech University with a degree in Industrial Engineering – Ph.D. (2004). He has worked for the USDA Agricultural Research Service, Cotton Production and Processing Research Unit (CPPRU) in Lubbock, TX since 1998. He is currently the Research Leader of CPPRU as well as the Cotton Post-Harvest Research and Education Coordinator for all three of the USDA-ARS ginning laboratories. His research program has covered a range of topics from air quality to machine design with a primary focus on cotton byproduct utilization. His work has been transferred to industry and was the driving factor in two new companies being created to manufacture erosion control products featuring cotton plant materials. His current research focus is on utilizing machine vision and AI in the removal of plastic contamination from seed cotton and cotton lint.

Hudson, Matthew

Speaking in: Genomics I
Speaker Bio:

Hulse-Kemp, Amanda

Speaking in: DASH: Enterprising AI and Phenotyping through Digital Ag Systems Hub
Speaker Bio:

Ingram, Thomas

Speaking in: Protein Structure Prediction Applications
Speaker Bio: Tom Ingram is a postdoc plant pathologist at the USDA-ARS Cereal Disease Lab in St. Paul Minnesota, currently working on wheat stem rust genomics. Born and raised in Ohio, he received his BS in Plant Biology from Ohio University, a MS in Plant Pathology from University of Georgia, and a PhD in Plant Pathology from North Carolina State University. Tom worked as a postdoc with Dr. Frank Louws and Dr. Ralph Dean at NC State before arriving at his current position with the USDA. Tom’s research generally focuses on host-pathogen interactions and bioinformatics.

Kassama, Sire

Speaking in: Lightning Talk Session II
Speaker Bio: Sire Kassama is a postdoctoral researcher for the Oak Ridge Institute for Science and Education within the USDA Scientific computing initiative. Currently, her work in Quinhagak, Alaska leverages Indigenous cultural and ecological knowledge to sustain Rubus chamaemorus subsistence practices. Using remote sensing technology and machine learning models, she is able to meet the needs of producers and major stakeholders for this important tundra plant.

Kearney, Sean

Speaking in: Remote Sensing Applications
Speaker Bio: Dr. Sean Kearney’s is a Research Ecologist with the USDA-ARS Rangeland Resources and Systems Research Unit (RRSRU). Sean is a spatial ecologist conducting research that combines field and remote sensing data to solve agronomic and ecological land management challenges. His work ranges from improving methods to monitor indicators of land health (e.g., erosion, carbon storage) to using spatial analysis tools to better understand the interactions between human activity and environmental change across landscape, regional and global scales. Sean’s work links ground data with a variety of remotely sensed datasets, including satellite imagery, GPS collar data on livestock and wildlife, airborne laser scanning (LiDAR) and others.

Khot, Lav

Speaking in: Collaboration and Education

Koirala, Mahesh

Speaking in: Lightning Talk Session I
Speaker Bio: Mahesh Koirala is an ORISE USDA SCINet Postdoctoral Fellow under the mentorship of Dr. Clifton Fagerquist at the USDA-ARS Albany, CA. He earned his Ph.D. in Physics, with a focus on Computational Biophysics, from Clemson University in 2022. He investigated the molecular mechanisms of disease-associated variants, utilizing tools such as Delphi for electrostatic interactions and various computational methodologies for molecular mechanics. Following his graduation, Dr. Koirala worked at Akttyva Therapeutics, for 1.5 years, where he contributed to various stages of the computational drug discovery processes. In his current role with Dr. Fagerquist, Dr. Koirala is conducting computational simulations on the folding and prediction of 3D structures of proteins from microorganisms using AlphaFold2 and examining their dynamics through Molecular Dynamics tools such as GROMACS. Additionally, he is gaining expertise in high-performance computing (HPC) by utilizing the diverse resources available within the SCINet Ceres and Atlas systems.

Kutugata, Matthew

Speaking in: DASH: Enterprising AI and Phenotyping through Digital Ag Systems Hub
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Larke, Jules

Speaking in: Food Science Applications
Speaker Bio: Dr. Jules Larke is a Computational Biologist with the USDA Western Human Nutrition Research Center in Davis, California. He has a PhD in Nutritional Biology from UC Davis where his dissertation research was to investigate the enrichment and metabolic output of Bifidobacterium spp. in the mammalian gut. Currently he studies the role of dietary glycans in shaping gut microbial communities and their impact on human health. Additionally, his research seeks to improve dietary assessment methods through informatics and AI. Dr. Larke continues developing and integrating fine-scale food composition data to characterize the molecular detail and diversity of our food to better understand the relationship between diet and health outcomes.

Lau, Jeekin

Speaking in: Future Trends: Large Language Models
Speaker Bio: Dr. Jeekin Lau is a peach rootstock breeder (Research Horticulturist) for the USDA-ARS at the Southeastern Fruit and Tree Nut Research Laboratory in Byron, Georgia. He did his undergraduate (fruit and vegetable production) and Master’s (pesticide efficacy) in Horticulture at Auburn University, his PhD (rose breeding) and postdoc (polyploid genetics/genomics) in Horticulture at Texas A&M University. Research interests include polyploid genetics, quantitative genetics, and genomics. He is interested in using these interests to study host plant resistance to diseases and abiotic stress factors. Specific diseases Jeekin focuses on are Armillaria Root Rot, Peach Tree Short Life, Phony peach, and peach viruses.

Lazo, Gerard

Speaking in: Future Trends: Large Language Models
Speaker Bio: Dr. Gerard Lazo is a Geneticist at the USDA-ARS Western Regional Research Center in Albany, CA, where he has worked since 1996. He received an M.S. and Ph.D. in Plant Pathology from Texas A&M University and the University of Florida, respectively; and has extensive training in microbiology, molecular biology, and plant-pathogen interactions. Throughout his career, Dr. Lazo has made significant contributions to understanding genome organization and gene expression in agricultural crops, particularly cereals, including their seed storage proteins. He played a key role in developing the GrainGenes database for small grains genomics, and hasbeen instrumental in advancing bioinformatics tools for analyzing complex plant genomes. His current research integrates molecular biology, database development, and computational approaches, including AI technologies, to study gene regulation, gene expression, and protein structure-function relationships in crops. This work aims to enhance our understanding of cereal genomics and facilitate crop improvement strategies through traditional and emerging technologies.

Li, Chengkai

Speaking in: Data Integration and AI in Knowledge Management - a soil carbon use case
Speaker Bio: Dr. Chengkai Li is a Professor and Associate Chair in the Department of Computer Science and Engineering at The University of Texas at Arlington. His research interests encompass various domains of big data intelligence and data science, including natural language processing, knowledge graphs and the semantic web, databases, data mining, and machine learning. His work extends to applications in computational journalism, data-driven fact-checking, smart agriculture, public health, and transportation. At UTA, he directs the Innovative Data Intelligence Research (IDIR) Lab and serves as co-director of the Center for Artificial Intelligence and Big Data (CARIDA). Dr. Li earned his Ph.D. in Computer Science from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, and holds an M.Eng. and a B.S. in Computer Science from Nanjing University.

Libohova, Zamir

Speaking in: Soil Science Applications
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Ling, Kai-Shu

Speaking in: Robotics and Sensors
Speaker Bio: Dr. Ling is a Research Plant Pathologist with more than 20 years at USDA–Agricultural Research Service (ARS), U.S. Vegetable Laboratory in Charleston, SC, USA. Dr. Ling received his Ph.D. in Plant Pathology (Virology) from Cornell University in 1995. He serves as Lead Scientist for the USDA-ARS project “Harnessing Genomic Technologies Toward Improving Vegetable Health in Field and Controlled Environments”. Over the years, he has served as PD, Co-PD and Co-PI in more than 10 USDA-NIFA competitive grant projects. In 2024, as PD, he received a conference planning grant award from the NIFA-AFRI program and successfully hosted the “2024 Joint National Workshop on Sustainable Development of Controlled Environment Agriculture” in Charleston, SC. Dr. Ling has published over 130 peer-reviewed articles and served as a mentor for many international visiting scholars, postdoctoral associates and college students.

Livsey, Daniel

Speaking in: Sustainability
Speaker Bio: Daniel Livsey specializes in hydrogeology with research interests in sediment transport, erosion, water quality, and hydrodynamics. Currently, at the USDA Agriculture Research Service (Research Hydrologist), his work is focused on unsaturated soil mechanics to advance earthen dam and levee design and erosion prediction. Prior to the ARS, he conducted research in Australia on water quality impacts to the Great Barrier Reef (Research Fellow, Queensland University of Technology), worked for the United States Geological Survey (USGS, Hydrologist), the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA, postdoctoral fellowship), University of California (UC, doctorate), and Oklahoma State University (OSU, undergraduate). Throughout his research, he has applied machine learning to various aspects of hydrogeology to advance understanding of droughts, floods, and water quality impairments.

Masrur, Arif

Speaking in: Remote Sensing Applications
Speaker Bio: Dr. Arif Masrur is a Senior Solution Engineer for spatial data science at Esri. He received his Ph.D. in Geography (specializing in GIScience) from Penn State University in 2022. His primary research interest focuses on geographic artificial intelligence (GeoAI) and its applications in natural hazards and precision agriculture. His dissertation, titled “Spatio-Temporally Interpretable GeoAI Approaches for Predictive Modeling of Geographic Events”, addressed key challenges in capturing spatial dependence, heterogeneity, and temporal non-stationarity within AI models to predict the discrete and dynamic behaviors of wildfire events. Dr. Masrur is also engaged in developing interpretable GeoAI approaches to improve management and policy decisions across various industries.

Maul, Jude E.

Speaking in: Lightning Talk Session I
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McCollam, Gerald A.

Speaking in: Computer Vision Detection of Foreign Objects
Speaker Bio: Gerald McCollam has over 25 years of experience developing high-performance computing systems for Fortune 100 companies, as well as for the research and biomedical sectors. He earned a Master of Science in Bioinformatics from Johns Hopkins University in 2023. With a background in bioinformatics and computing, Gerald has participated in advanced studies in machine learning and deep learning for agriculture. Recently retired from USDA-ARS, Gerald is currently pursuing a Ph.D. in Bioinformatics and Computational Biology at George Mason University. His research interests include precision agriculture, plant breeding, and epigenomics.

Meles, Menberu

Speaking in: Lightning Talk Session II
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Mirsky, Steven

Speaking in: DASH: Enterprising AI and Phenotyping through Digital Ag Systems Hub
Speaker Bio: Dr. Steven Mirsky has been an ecologist with the ARS Sustainable Agricultural Systems Lab since 2008. He earned a B.S. in Agroecology, an M.S. in Soil Science, and a Ph.D. in Agronomy. His research includes the development of IoT plant and soil sensing technologies for transdisciplinary team research, breeders, and farmers. Data from these efforts support national web-based decision support tools (DST) for real-time farm management and long-term planning. He co-leads the software development of national plant vegetation conservation DSTs for NRCS. As co-lead of the Precision Sustainable Agriculture (precisionsustainableag.org) and Getting Rid of Weeds (growiwm.org) networks, Dr. Mirsky has driven the development of software and IoT systems used by over 210 scientists across hundreds of farms and 38 research stations nationwide. Notable achievements include PlantMap3D, a low-cost tool for real-time plant species and biomass mapping, and one of the world’s largest annotated open-source plant image repositories (~150 TB and growing).

Mitra, Alakananda

Speaking in: Modeling I
Speaker Bio: Dr. Alakananda Mitra is a Research Assistant Professor at the Nebraska Water Center at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln and a Visiting Computer Scientist at the USDA-ARS Adaptive Cropping Systems Laboratory. She earned her Ph.D. in computer science and engineering from the University of North Texas in 2022. Dr. Mitra’s research focuses on AI/ML, deep learning, computer vision, IoT, and edge AI in smart agriculture and multimedia forensics. Currently, she is working on AI-based crop models, plant disease detection on tinyML devices, and federated learning in smart agriculture. She is developing an application, related databases, and other agro-climatology modeling tools for ACSL’s crop and soil simulation models. Dr. Mitra has received numerous academic awards and honors, including the Outstanding Doctoral Student and several Best Paper awards. She holds two pending US patents.

Mooney, Amber

Speaking in: Disease Transmission Applications
Speaker Bio: Amber Mooney holds a Ph.D. in Computational Sciences with an emphasis in Mathematics from the University of Southern Mississippi. She is an Associate Professor of Mathematics at William Carey University and Postdoctoral Fellow at the USDA-Agriculture Research Service’s National Bio and AgroDefense Facility. Amber’s research is driven by a commitment to advancing the understanding of disease ecology through cutting edge artificial intelligence models. With a focus on West Nile Virus transmission, she leverages geographically informed graph neural networks with recurrent layers and spatiotemporal analysis to address complex ecological challenges. She is dedicated advancing scientific knowledge and translating these insights into actionable solutions. Her work aims to inform and shape public health strategies in high-risk regions, ensuring that data-driven decisions lead to effective, targeted interventions. She strives to transform scientific research into real-world impact, driving tangible improvements in public health.

Nitin, Nitin

Speaking in: Food Science Applications

O’Connor, Christopher

Speaking in: Systems-Level Applications
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Osorio-Leyton, Javier M.

Speaking in: Modeling II
Speaker Bio: Dr. Javier Osorio Leyton is an Associate Professor at Texas A&M AgriLife Research associated to the Department of Rangelands, Wildlife and Fisheries. Dr. Osorio Leyton’s research interest focus on linking learning and process-based simulation models with geospatial data analytics to support data-driven decision-making for agriculture and natural resource management. Dr. Osorio Leyton is the P.I. of the project “Extending the Regional Environment and Agriculture Programming (REAP) Model for the Analysis of Climate Adaptation” funded by USDA - ERS Resource and Rural Economics Division. Dr. Osorio Leyton also works overseeing advance modeling research related to the USDA-Natural Resources Conservation Service’s Conservation Effects Assessment Project (CEAP). Dr. Osorio Leyton received his Ph.D. in Biological Systems Engineering, Virginia Polytechnic Institute & State University, his MS in Animal Production at National Agrarian University La Molina (Pe), and his BS in Agronomy from the University of San Simon (Bo).

Pachepsky, Yakov

Speaking in: Remote Sensing Applications

Papanicolaou, Thanos

Speaking in: Systems-Level Applications
Dr. Papanicolaou (Thanos) is the director of the National Lab for Agriculture and the Environment (ARS-Ames, IA-MWA) and a world leader in flow turbulence-sediment interactions and developing Critical Zone science. His research “connects” uplands to the river and estuarine environment in a way that integrates human activities with the natural environment for the benefit of both, including: (a) isotopic soil/ sediment fingerprinting as a means to track non-point source pollution across scales; (b) the relation between near-turbulence and incipient motion of bed sediment to explain intermittency in sediment movement; (c) water erosion processes over a soil surface using fusion of models and sensors; (d) perturbation theory and knickpoint migration with implications to infrastructure; and (e) dynamics of soil carbon. Thanos’ work in academia and now in ARS has advanced our understanding of how critical interfaces in landscapes affect transport and hydrobiogeochemical phenomena from the small scale to the landscape scale, and from the event time scale to seasonal, inter-annual and decadal time scales. For more information on his biography please see Thanos Papanicolaou : USDA ARS

Park, John Y.

Speaking in: Future Trends: Large Language Models

Parr, Cynthia

Speaking in: Responsible Use of AI In USDA Research
Speaker Bio: Dr. Cynthia Parr leads USDA’s public access policy and implementation from the Agricultural Research Service’s National Agricultural Library. She also leads the REE data and analytics program, coordinating initiatives across ARS, ERS, NASS, NIFA, and OCS in support of the Foundations for Evidence-based Policymaking Act. She currently co-leads the USDA AI Center of Excellence and co-chairs the international Research Data Alliance IGAD community of practice: Improving Global Agricultural Data. Prior to joining USDA ten years ago, Dr. Parr served as Chief Scientist of the Encyclopedia of Life at the Smithsonian Institution’s National Museum of Natural History. Dr. Parr received a BA in biology from Cornell University and an MS and PhD in biology from the University of Michigan. She was a postdoctoral fellow at Seoul National University in South Korea and held research positions in computer science at UMBC and the Human-Computer Interaction Laboratory of University of Maryland College Park. Dr. Parr has authored over 60 scholarly works and organized 40 conferences, workshops, and symposia. She was the first woman to chair the Biodiversity Information Standards organization (the Taxonomic Databases Working Group) and has served on the board of the Earth Science Information Partners.

Peng, Bin

Speaking in: Sustainability

Perkin, Lindsey

Speaking in: Genomics II
Speaker Bio: Dr. Lindsey Perkin is a Research Molecular Biologist with the USDA-ARS, Insect Control and Cotton Disease Research Unit in College Station, TX. She focuses on insect pests of commodity crops such as cotton and pecan. Dr. Perkin received her M.S. in biology from Texas Christian University and Ph.D. in biology from Kansas State University with an emphasis on the genomic architecture of adaptation in insects. She gained experience in transcriptomics and functional genomics as an ARS postdoc in Manhattan, KS. Her work continues to incorporate genomics and expression data, and recently AI models, to answer questions about pest biology, demography, and adaptation. In her current research program, she strives to develop easy-to-use tools to aid stakeholders in distinguishing pests from non-pests, as well as address other questions and needs to support cotton and pecan production and protection.

Poretsky, Elly

Speaking in: Lightning Talk Session I
Speaker Bio: As a computational biologist with extensive experience in plant genetics, molecular biology, metabolomics, and bioinformatics, my research consistently aims to enhance our understanding of plant-environment interactions through innovative approaches. In my early career, I worked in the Schroeder lab to investigate plant responses to abiotic stress via abscisic acid (ABA) signaling. My graduate research with Dr. Huffaker focused on plant immune responses, where I characterized maize elicitor peptides, used CRISPR technology to study their receptors, and discovered a novel antagonistic peptide. I also utilized genetic mapping to identify a maize candidate receptor in response to herbivory-associated elicitors. I developed MutRank, an R Shiny web application, to facilitate gene coexpression analysis in maize biosynthetic pathways. As a postdoctoral researcher with Dr. Schmelz, I integrated multiomic approaches to examine maize root-microbiome interactions. Currently, as a SCINet postdoctoral fellow with Dr. Sen at GrainGenes, I apply protein structure prediction and protein language models to improve protein function annotation in cereal crops. I developed a machine learning model for protein phosphorylation prediction using protein language models and conducted a network analysis of maize predicted pan-interactomes for putative gene function prediction and prioritization of candidate genes for important traits. Additionally, I worked on automating QTL and GWAS result curation using LLMs. My career reflects a commitment to combining genomics, bioinformatics, and biochemistry for scientific innovation in agriculture, with long-term goals of becoming an independent researcher focused on the genetic and biochemical basis of plant responses to biotic and abiotic stresses.

Qian, Luke

Speaking in: Sustainability Speaker Bio: Luke Qian is a post-doc in the Department of Food Science at Cornell University, under the advisement of Dr. Martin Wiedmann. His research has been focused on developing models for predicting dairy spoilage as well as produce safety risks. Luke has also been involved with initializing a data repository for hosting food safety datasets that can be used to develop AI models. In addition, he is interested in different privacy protection techniques to encourage data sharing in food safety, which would further facilitate AI development.

Rahman, Mashrekur

Speaking in: Modeling I
Speaker Bio: Dr. Mashrekur Rahman is a Postdoctoral Scholar at the USDA Sustainable Agricultural Water Systems Unit, where he leads research on soil moisture dynamics using advanced AI techniques. He recently completed his Ph.D. in Hydrologic Sciences from the University of California, Davis, where he developed innovative AI applications for Earth systems modeling and human-Earth systems interactions. His research combines artificial intelligence with environmental science, focusing on drought prediction, human-drought interactions, hydrological modeling, and science communication. His research has been supported by institutions including NASA, NOAA, USDA, Google, and NCAR. Beyond his academic work, Dr. Rahman is a trained Climate Leader with extensive international experience in environmental leadership.

Reberg-Horton, Chris

Speaking in: DASH: Enterprising AI and Phenotyping through Digital Ag Systems Hub
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Reeves, Matthew

Speaking in: Remote Sensing Applications
Speaker Bio:

Richardson, Jared

Speaking in: Lightning Talk Session I
Speaker Bio: Jared Richardson is a first-year Ph.D. student in mathematics at the University of Texas at Arlington. His primary interests are in biostatistics, statistical learning, and computational -Omics. His current research, in collaboration with the USDA’s Dale Bumpers National Rice Research Center, employs Bayesian networks to analyze relationships between genetic markers and trait interactions. Additionally, he is developing convolutional neural network (CNN) models to predict gene expression and the phenotypic effects of genomic variants. Jared’s long-term objective is to enhance crop resilience and quality through data-driven agricultural insights. He aims to develop a systems biology framework to model the regulatory mechanisms of traits, potentially using stochastic approaches to capture the interplay between genetic and molecular signals.

Rivers, Adam

Speaking in: Responsible Use of AI In USDA Research
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Saelao, Perot

Speaking in: Genomics I
Speaker Bio: I am a Molecular Biologist (Bioinformaticist) at the USDA Agricultural Research Service Knipling-Bushland U.S. Livestock Arthropod Pests Research Lab in Kerrville, Texas. My research interests focus on understanding the genetic root of disease resistance and susceptibility and how improvements in the lab can be translated to improvements in the agricultural sector. Utilizing genetic and genomic approaches, I hope to create a better understanding of the regulatory mechanisms involved in host-pathogen interactions. I believe that by applying my expertise in both the molecular sciences and computational methods, I can better develop a holistic understanding of the systems we investigate in the lab. I have over 11 years of experience working with next generation sequencing data and the development of analytical pipelines to process and review sequencing results. My strength as a researcher has been in my ability to foster collaboration by contributing my computational and analytical training, with my extensive molecular biology experience. My research training has been bolstered through collaborations on research projects spanning from functional annotation of animal genomes, immunology, virology, and genome-wide association studies. Although my background has been primarily within the field of agriculture, the methods and training developed during my career have been heavily focused on trying to understand common and rare genetic variation can affect molecular phenotypes. In addition, I have had extensive training in genetic analysis of transcriptomic, proteomic, and epigenetic data and have published extensively on these topics.

Sartore, Luca

Speaking in: Plenary III: Practical Applications of AI Across the USDA Research Portfolio, Modeling II
Speaker Bio: Luca Sartore is a Senior Researcher for the National Institute of Statistical Science (NISS), working with the National Agricultural Statistical Service (NASS). He has been involved with the estimation and calibration of the US Census of Agriculture. He worked on modelling livestock, yield, and acreage for major agricultural commodities using various data sources, and he has also developed methodologies for assessing uncertainties. His contribution on the automation of analytical systems has focused on machine learning, artificial intelligence, and high-performance computing. He received his master in Statistics from the Ca’ Foscari University of Venice (Italy) and Ph.D. from the University of Padua (Italy). After his Ph.D., he joined the European Center of Living Technologies as a postdoc researching evolutionary algorithms in AI for one year in Venice (Italy).

Schnable, Patrick

Speaking in: Genomics II
Speaker Bio: Pat Schnable is a distinguished professor at Iowa State University where he is the Iowa Corn Endowed Chair and directs the Plant Sciences Institute that is fostering collaborations among plant scientists, engineers, and data scientists. He is also the Baker Scholar of Agricultural Entrepreneurship and the lead of Iowa’s Digital & Precision Ag economic development platform. Schnable received a BS in Agronomy from Cornell University and a PhD in Plant Breeding and Cytogenetics from Iowa State University before conducting post-doctoral research in Molecular Genetics at the Max Planck Institute in Köln, Germany. Schnable’s wide-ranging investigations of the genetics, genomics, and phenomics of maize have resulted in over 200 peer-reviewed publications, an h-index of 89, and over 28,000 citations. He is a fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, co-lead of the Genomes to Fields Initiative, the PI of the Agricultural Genomes to Phenomes Initiative (AG2PI), a past chair of the American Society of Plant Biology’s Science Policy Committee, and a past chair of the Maize Genetics Executive Committee. Schnable is also a serial ag-tech entrepreneur. For example, he is CEO and co-Founder of Dryland Genetics Inc., a proso millet breeding company. He also serves on the scientific advisory boards of several ag-tech companies and consults widely.

Sen, Taner

Speaking in: Collaboration and Education
Speaker Bio: Dr. Sen directs the GrainGenes database, which is the USDA’s flagship centralized database for wheat, barley, rye, and oat data. He is also an Adjunct Professor in the Department of Bioengineering at the University of California, Berkeley. Dr. Sen’s research interests are (1) biological data management and sharing using the FAIR principles, (2) the analysis of genomes, protein structures, and protein and gene networks using bioinformatics and machine learning, and (3) development of web -based tools to serve research communities.

Serfa Juan, Ronnie O.

Speaking in: Computer Vision II
Speaker Bio: Ronnie Serfa Juan is a postdoctoral researcher at the Agricultural Research Service (ARS) Center for Grain and Animal Health Research at the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) under the SCINet Program and ARS Center of Excellence in Artificial Intelligence, Office of National Programs. Their current research focuses on the integreation of AI, machine learning, and IoT for pest management.

Shajahan, Sunoj

Speaking in: Robotics and Sensors

Shao, Jonathan

Speaking in: Computer Vision : Foreign Objects, Invasives, and Pathogens
Speaker Bio: Jonathan Shao is a highly skilled bioinformatician with extensive training in computational biology. Dr. Shao earned a PhD in Computational Biology and Bioinformatics from George Mason University, an MS in Bioinformatics from The Johns Hopkins University, and a BA in Biochemistry from the University of Maryland. With a robust foundation in both bioinformatics and biology, he possesses deep expertise in leveraging advanced technologies and cutting-edge methodologies for analyzing complex omics data in agricultural research. A few highlights include expertise in machine learning algorithms, microbiomes, and virus detection. Through his interdisciplinary approach, he utilizes computational tools and insights to better understand agricultural diseases to aid in disease prevention, management, and crop improvement.

Simmons, Gregory

Speaking in: Disease Transmission Applications

Singh, Arti

Speaking in: Applied Tools
Speaker Bio: Dr. Arti Singh is an Associate Professor in the Department of Agronomy at Iowa State University with more than 15 years of plant breeding experience. After obtaining her PhD degree from G.B. Pant University in India, she worked as a Post-doctoral fellow at the University of Saskatchewan and then at Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada prior to joining Iowa State University. She has authored two textbooks ‘Disease and Insect Resistance in Plants’ and “Plant Breeding and Cultivar Development.” She has published peer reviewed research articles in reputed and high impact journals including the Proceeding of National Academy of Sciences and Trends in Plant Science. She has been awarded competitive grants by USDA-NIFA Agriculture and Food Research Initiative (AFRI) Food and Agriculture Cyberinformatics and Tools (FACT), National Science Foundation, Iowa Soybean Association, IA Soybean Research Center, and United Soybean Board. She leads a green (Vigna radiata) and black gram (Vigna mungo) breeding program focused on developing new varieties for plant-based protein markets. Her research projects are geared towards harnessing genetic diversity for genetic gain, utilization of advanced data analytics particularly machine and deep learning for early disease and stress signatures, and genetic/genomic studies on abiotic and biotic stress resistance.

Stasiewicz, Matthew

Speaking in: Lightning Talk Session I
Speaker Bio: Matthew Stasiewicz is an Associate Professor of Applied Food Safety in the Department of Food Science and Human Nutrition at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. His work uses risk assessment and innovative laboratory methods to advance food safety microbiology. At Michigan State University he earned both a B.S. in Biosystems Engineering, focusing on food process engineering, and a B.A. in Philosophy, focusing on ethics. At Cornell he earned an M.S. and Ph.D. in food microbiology, working on risk analysis. The lab has many projects using simulation and risk assessment to improve sampling and testing for, and management of, foodborne pathogens in large-scale food productions environments.

Stevens, Bo Maxwell

Speaking in: Soil Science Applications
Speaker Bio: Bo Maxwell Stevens is a Data Scientist with the USDA Agricultural Research Service in Fort Collins, CO. He holds a Ph.D. in Environmental Science from Northern Arizona University and has a strong research background in soil microbial ecology, machine learning, and high-resolution data analysis. His research interests include applying advanced statistical models to understand the interactions between soil properties, microbial communities, and crop yields. Dr. Stevens has led multiple projects as a principal investigator, authored scientific publications, and contributed to collaborative efforts with researchers across institutions. His expertise includes bioinformatics, genomic data analysis, and scientific communication in both agricultural and ecological research settings.

Stewart, Cathy

Speaking in: Data Integration and AI in Knowledge Management - a soil carbon use case
Speaker Bio: Dr. Cathy Stewart is Research Soil Scientist in the USDA-ARS Soil Management Sugarbeet Research Unit in Fort Collins, CO. She has served as Field Director for the Partnerships for Data Innovations promoting data stewardship by catalyzing efficient and impactful data collaborations and enabling transformation of how researchers collect, visualize, and store agricultural data to improve availability and ease of access. Her research interests include long-term impacts of agricultural management on soil and agroecosystem sustainability, soil carbon storage and biogeochemistry. She received a B.A. in Biology from Colorado College and a Ph.D. in Ecology from Colorado State University in 2006.

Stucky, Brian

Speaking in: Responsible Use of AI In USDA Research
Speaker Bio: Brian Stucky is a computational biologist with the SCINet Office at the USDA’s Agricultural Research Service (ARS). He is also currently serving as the acting chief scientific information officer for ARS. Brian’s professional background includes training in biology, ecology, and computer science. Brian has a broad background in scientific research and computing and he enjoys helping advance ARS’s research mission by facilitating the application of advanced computational methods to agricultural science.

Tabassum, Shawana

Speaking in: Robotics and Sensors
Speaker Bio: Dr. Shawana Tabassum is an Assistant Professor at the University of Texas at Tyler, where she directs the Center for Smart Agriculture Technology. She received her Ph.D. degree in electrical and computer engineering from Iowa State University, Ames, IA, in 2018. Her research focuses on the development of flexible and wearable sensors using micro/nanoelectronics and photonics technologies. She applies this expertise to various areas, including biomedicine, plant sciences, sustainable and climate-smart agriculture, and environmental monitoring. Over the past 4 years, Dr. Tabassum secured more than 10 external research grants from NSF, USDA, NASA, CDC, VentureWell, American Association of University Women, and Trauma Research and Combat Casualty Care Collaborative as a PI or Co-PI. Dr. Tabassum’s notable awards and honors include the Young Professionals Award (2023), the Curtis W. McGraw Research Award (2023), and Science Breakthrough of the Year: Emerging Talent Award from the Falling Walls Lab Berlin global finale (2020).

Tarter, Alex C.

Speaking in: Responsible Use of AI In USDA Research
Speaker Bio: Alex Tarter is a mathematical statistician in the Research & Development Division of the National Agricultural Statistics Service. He has worked in the USDA since 2022. He received his PhD in Applied Mathematics from the University of Southern California, where he studied the statistical theory of voting methodologies. His federal research focuses on sampling and estimation, including the improvement of crop yield estimates, and the risk and utility associated with statistical publication techniques. He is also interested in evaluating the disclosure risks of artificial intelligence tools and establishing protocols for safely and effectively implementing these devices in the federal workforce.

Ulmer, Lucas

Speaking in: Modeling II
Speaker Bio: Lucas Ulmer is a postdoctoral researcher with the Horticultural Crops Disease and Pest Management Research Unit within the USDA-ARS. His background is in environmental fluid dynamics and bioengineering, with particular interests in atmospheric dispersion and predictive modeling for viticulture. His current work combines data science approaches with physics-based models to study the epidemiology of airborne crop pathogens. He is a developer of QES (Quick Environmental Simulation), an open-source, fast-response environmental physics simulator. His other research interests include inverse problems, Bayesian statistics, and machine learning. In addition to computational work, he has collaborated with fellow researchers in a variety of multi-institution field experiments, collecting atmospheric data in crop fields, deserts, and mountains.

Waldo, Benjamin

Speaking in: Lightning Talk Session II
Speaker Bio: Dr. Benjamin Waldo is a Research Plant Pathologist with USDA-ARS in Beltsville, MD. He graduated from the University of Evansville with a B.S. in Applied Biology, and the University of Florida with a MS in Nematology and Doctorate of Plant Medicine. His research focuses on the management and ecology of soil inhabiting nematodes as well as developing identification and diagnostic approaches for nematodes using tools like machine learning.

Wang, Yuxiong

Speaking in: Future Trends: Multimodal Learning
Speaker Bio: Yuxiong Wang is an Assistant Professor in the Siebel School of Computing and Data Science at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. He is also affiliated with the Artificial Intelligence for Future Agricultural Resilience, Management, and Sustainability (AIFARMS) Institute, the Center for Digital Agriculture (CDA), and the National Center for Supercomputing Applications (NCSA). He received a Ph.D. in robotics from Carnegie Mellon University. His research interests lie in computer vision, machine learning, and robotics, with a particular focus on meta-learning, open-world perception, multimodal learning, and generative modeling. He is a recipient of awards including the Amazon Faculty Research Award, the ECCV Best Paper Honorable Mention Award, and the CVPR Best Paper Award Finalists. He is selected to participate in the National Academy of Engineering’s (NAE) Frontiers of Engineering symposium. For details: https://yxw.cs.illinois.edu/.

Washburn, Jacob

Speaking in: Genomics I
Speaker Bio: Dr. Jacob Washburn is a research geneticist at the USDA-ARS Plant Genetics Research Unit in Columbia, MO. He received his PhD in Biological Sciences from the University of Missouri in 2017, completed a joint postdoctoral fellowship at Cornell University and the University of Queensland, AUS in 2019 and began his work at USDA-ARS in 2020. Dr. Washburn’s research focuses on predicting and understanding plant phenotypic responses to genetic, environmental, and management factors using high-throughput phenotyping, quantitative genetics, machine learning, deep learning, and physiological crop growth models.

Weigle, Austin

Speaking in: Protein Structure Prediction Applications
Speaker Bio: Austin Weigle earned his B.S. in Plant Biochemistry from Southern Illinois University and his Ph.D in Chemical Biology from the University of Illinois. For his dissertation, he used molecular modeling and simulation to uncover regulatory principles for membrane transport proteins. At Illinois, he successfully designed a selective plant sugar transporter using predictive modeling. As a USDA-ARS SCINet Postdoctoral Fellow, he is applying his expertise to identify a molecular basis for gluten allergies and to engineer a gluten digestive enzyme. He has received honorable mentions from the Barry M. Goldwater Foundation and the NSF Graduate Research Fellowship Program, and he received the 2024 American Chemical Society Spring Chemical Computing Group Excellence Award. Personally, Austin enjoys listening to music, playing strategic games, partaking in spirited conversations, and trying new foods. Austin is motivated towards a career that converts Nature’s chemical design principles into safe, specific, and useful molecules.

Wiedmann, Martin

Speaking in: Sustainability
Speaker Bio: Martin Wiedmann, Dr. med. vet, Ph.D. is the Gellert Family Professor of Food Safety at Cornell University. His research interests focus on farm-to-table microbial food quality and food safety and the application of molecular tools and quantitative and modelling approaches to study the transmission of foodborne pathogens and spoilage organisms. In particular, Martin’s team has been developing digital twins and AI models as decision-support tools for the industry. His team has published > 450 peer reviewed publications, which have been cited >35,000 times. He and his team are regularly asked to help industry across the world with a range of microbial food safety and quality challenges.

Willard, Lory

Speaking in: Disease Transmission Applications
Speaker Bio: Lory Willard is a USDA-ARS postdoctoral researcher working at the CMAVE (Center for Medical, Agricultural and Veterinary Entomology) in Gainesville, Florida. She received a PhD from the Agricultural and Biological Engineering Department at the University of Florida. She received BS and MS degrees from the Biological Systems Engineering Department at Virginia Tech. Her research interests include biocomplexity modeling, with a focus on ecosystem conservation, hydrology, agriculture, public health, and remote sensing applications in data scarce regions.

Wilson, Stephanie

Speaking in: Food Science Applications
Speaker Bio: Stephanie Wilson, PhD is a nutrition scientist and postdoctoral research fellow with Texas A&M Institute for Advancing Health Through Agriculture and the USDA ARS Western Human Nutrition Research Center in Davis, California. Her research portfolio encompasses dietary bioactives and other plant-based dietary strategies to improve gut and cardiometabolic health. Dr. Wilson has expertise in leading dietary clinical trials designed to characterize the physiological responses to dietary constituents and dietary patterns. Her current research examines how dietary polyphenol intake may shape the gut microbiome and its capacity to utilize polyphenols. Dr. Wilson holds an interdisciplinary PhD with a nutrition emphasis from Montana State University, an MS in exercise and nutrition sciences also from Montana State University, and a BS in Kinesiology from Indiana University.

Winzeler, H. Edwin

Speaking in: Systems-Level Applications

Woodward-Greene, Jennifer

Speaking in: Data Integration and AI in Knowledge Management - a soil carbon use case, Plenary III: Practical Applications of AI Across the USDA Research Portfolio
Speaker Bio: Dr. M. Jennifer Woodward-Greene, USDA-ARS National Agricultural Library (NAL) Acting Associate Director, Data Production Division, and Indexing and Informatics Branch Chief, manages NAL’s Thesaurus “NALT”, established in 1967 as a controlled vocabulary for subject indexing agricultural text. NALT today supports NAL’s automated indexing production and quality systems, continuing as the linchpin supporting association or integration of Agricultural data/information/knowledge from a variety of sources and formats. The NALT for the Machine Age (N4MA) initiative recently refactored NALT to capture fuller agricultural concepts and semantic relationships as standardized machine-readable labels for tagging traditional subject indexing, and for use in tabular data schemas. A guiding N4MA principle is to enable full inclusion and engagement of users (USDA experts/data generators) allowing them flexibility and input into the vocabulary and data schema semantics captured in NALT. Dr. Woodward-Greene has a PhD in Bioinformatics and Computational Biology, and BS and MS degrees in Animal Science (https://orcid.org/0000-0003-3236-2711).

Xu, Zhanyou

Speaking in: Genomics II