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Join CDA and AIFARMS at SRI 2025 in Chicago!

The Sustainability Research and Innovation Congress will celebrate its fifth anniversary in Chicago, Illinois, from June 16 to 19, 2025, at the Sheraton Grand Chicago Riverwalk, hosted by the University of Illinois System. SRI is an annual convening focused on action-forward, knowledge-based, and inclusive approaches to sustainability. SRI2025 will be the first time the Congress is held in the United States. The event builds on the momentum of Congresses in Australia, South Africa, Panama, and Finland, connecting in person and virtually worldwide with satellite events and interactive online experiences.

SRI2025 will spotlight Pathways to Sustainability Solutions, sharing implementation strategies and legacies of successful approaches to critical sustainability concerns facing Chicago, the United States, and the globe. It will also provide opportunities to overcome hurdles related to engagement, policy, resourcing, and other factors that slow our transformation to more resilient and equitable futures.

CDA and AIFARMS are proud to participate in this event! See below for a list of SRI2025 activities involving our researchers, affiliates, and collaborations.

Monday, June 16th

Farms of the Future: Leveraging Robotics, AI, and Synergistic Practices for Sustainable Agriculture

Abstract: This session explores cutting-edge technologies shaping the future of agriculture, focusing on the integration of robotics, artificial intelligence (AI), edge connectivity and synergistic crop-livestock practices to achieve sustainability goals. Highlighting the University of Illinois-led I-FARM and iCOVER initiatives, we will showcase how autonomous systems, AI-enabled sensing, and regenerative management strategies are taking steps to transform farming into a climate-smart, resource-efficient enterprise. Participants will learn how innovations such as robotic cover-crop planting, variable-rate input applications, and AI-based soil and animal health monitoring are addressing critical challenges in agriculture: reducing labor and cost burdens, enhancing carbon sequestration, and improving nutrient management. Emphasis will also be placed on how these technologies enable equitable solutions for underserved farmers, particularly through collaborations like those with Tuskegee University, to scale up climate-smart practices and create new market opportunities. This session aligns with the SRI’s focus on actionable knowledge and impactful solutions by presenting scalable, technology-driven methods that directly address sustainability challenges in agriculture. By engaging diverse expertise—from technology developers to agricultural practitioners and economists—it highlights a multi-disciplinary, systems-oriented approach to sustainable farming. Attendees will gain actionable insights into how robotics and AI and new technology can be deployed to mitigate environmental impacts, enhance productivity, and foster inclusivity in farming communities. Our focus on bridging knowledge with action is demonstrated by the tangible outputs of I-FARM and iCOVER, including cost-effective autonomous technologies and the development of new market linkages for climate-smart benefits. This session offers a forward-looking vision of agriculture, rooted in research and actionable practices, and invites collaboration to accelerate the adoption of these transformative solutions.

Tuesday, June 17th

Designing Sustainable Food System through Digital Twin: A Farm-Bill Policy Design Workshop

Abstract: Our proposal focuses on an innovative approach to leveraging digital twinning technology to simulate innovative designs of policies for the US Farm Bill policy to enhance the sustainability of our food system. The US government legislative process is one of the most significant challenges to redesigning federal policies, and the disconnect between research and actionable policy is a longstanding issue. While Congress is informed about the budgetary cost of a policy, it rarely receives information on what those dollars might achieve in terms of environmental or societal benefits. Using digital replicas, we are able to move beyond simple cost projections to simulate a range of real-world outcomes, providing policymakers with a data-rich environment to evaluate potential policy impacts, fostering creativity and innovation in the policy process while demonstrating the potential of science-driven decision-making. This workshop aims to take steps towards helping bridge this gap between research and policy by engaging participants in an interactive experience. Participants will explore the legislative process in-depth, gaining a nuanced understanding of policy making through group (e.g., political factions) simulations that combine legislative scenarios with scientific and research analysis. They will also learn how to apply and communicate the findings into policy design and deliberation. By applying digital replication technology to simulate a range of policy scenarios, attendees will create informed and innovative policy alternatives. This workshop serves as a demonstration of a collaborative approach to integrating digital replication science into food system policymaking, illustrating the potential for data-driven solutions.

Thursday, June 19th

Breakthrough Biotechnology and Sustainability Science for the Bioeconomy

Abstract: This panel will communicate to congress participants recent breakthrough developments in biotechnology and sustainability science that are laying the foundation for emergence of a bioeconomy that can deliver economic growth while acting as a clean, domestic source of fuels and biobased products. In doing so, it will communicate how transdisciplinary R&D teams working across academia and industry can: 

  1. Make cutting-edge science discoveries spanning genomics, artificial intelligence, crop science, microbial metabolic engineering, chemistry, biogeochemistry, economics and environmental engineering to alleviate biophysical constraints upon the bioeconomy
  2. Refine and deploy novel technologies to support economic growth across diverse regions of the world while also enhancing sustainability and resilience under global change.

These discussions are intended to make congress participants re-assess their understanding of how the bioeconomy can be systematically re-designed to break the links between economic growth, resource use and environmental health that have defined society since the industrial revolution. Congress participants will have the opportunity to question a panel with expertise in: biotechnology, greenhouse gas cycling, clean energy, precision fermentation, integrated agricultural management, and global economic development. This discussion will capture progress in terms of both scientific discovery and the intellectual property needed to allow tech-transfer for commercialization and scientific impact.

Sustainability Through AI-Enabled Crop Improvement

Abstract: The broad mission of the AIFARMS National AI Institute for Agriculture is to develop foundational advances in Artificial Intelligence (AI) and use them to ensure that future agriculture is environmentally friendly, sustainable, affordable, and accessible to a wide range of farming communities. Current agriculture production challenges stem from unsustainable labor needs, soil degeneration, herbicide/ pesticide resistance, nitrogen runoff, greenhouse gas emissions, and animal welfare concerns. Technological advances within agriculture will be essential to sustain a growing population without further exacerbating these impacts. Moreover, as climate extremes intensify, scientific and technological advances are essential to improve resilience to abiotic and biotic stress.

These critical challenges are difficult to tackle with human capacity and conventional technologies alone. AI can complement and enhance conventional technologies in ways that can greatly improve the likelihood of achieving these challenging goals. For example, AI-driven systems can manage heterogeneity and variability by analyzing vast amounts of information from diverse sources at varying scales. Examples specifically addressed in this session will include computer vision for plant phenotyping, autonomous navigation and computer vision for in-field plant phenotyping, and machine learning-enabled Genotype to Phenotype predictions. 

This session will discuss the role AI can play in advancing the next generation of plant breeding and phenotyping systems through close collaborations between multidisciplinary teams and with use-inspired Ag challenges. The panel will feature Dr. Andrew Leakey and Dr. Narendra Ahuja from the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, and Dr. Andrea Eveland from the Donald Danforth Plant Science Center. Each panelist will elaborate on their research applying AI methods to accelerate plant breeding and phenotyping as a result of AIFARMS National AI for Agriculture Institute.

Integrating Solar Farming on Cropland and the Potential for Agrivoltaics

Abstract: Declining costs of photovoltaic (PV) technology and rising market and policy incentives are leading to the growing deployment of utility scale PV on cropland in the US Midwest. Utility-scale solar is the fastest-growing segment of solar energy deployment and is land-intensive, requiring 3–10 acres per MWdc of installed capacity. Utility-scale PV installations are expected to require 4 -11 million acres of land by 2050. Agricultural croplands coincide with areas favorable to solar energy deployment, and they often have the highest productivity for PV generation; over 70% of the solar energy deployments in the last decade have been on cropland. This is leading to concerns about the displacement of food crop production by energy generation competing for cropland. An emerging technological alternative to integrating solar energy on cropland is through agrivoltaics, that co-locates solar panels with crop or livestock production on the same land, in between or under solar panels. Agrivoltaic installations can take various forms, from planting pollinators, specialty and other crops, and pasture grasses to animal grazing sites. Agrivoltaic systems can create competition between solar radiation available for solar energy generation and crop production. Shading of crops by the panels can have positive or negative effects on crop yield depending on the shade tolerance of the crop and climatic conditions. They can also positively or negatively affect the solar energy yield relative to PV alone. Additionally, while AV can allow dual use of land, it can also lead to some land that cannot be used for either energy or crop production because a buffer area is required between panels and crops to allow for equipment movement without damaging the panels. This session will discuss the technological advances and policy incentives needed to make Agrivoltaics a viable technological solution for sustainably producing food and energy and using land more efficiently.