The Center for Digital Agriculture (CDA) at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign is being awarded $750,000 by the USDA-NIFA Research and Extension Experiences for Undergraduates (REEU) program for a proposal titled “Digital Applications of Technology in Agriculture for Sustainable, Multidisciplinary, Accessible, Resilient, and Translatable (DATA SMART) Systems.” The funding, awarded over five years, will extend the services and opportunities offered through the CDA Research Experience for Undergraduates (REU) program.
CDA REU is a 10-week summer experience aimed at encouraging students to consider research careers focused on applications within agriculture, life sciences, and other biological science–related industries. This program seeks to attract students from non-PhD-granting institutions and community colleges to engage with research, extension, and educational opportunities. The CDA REU program is a joint effort funded by multiple research grants, including a previous NSF REU Site Award. This new USDA-NIFA REEU award ensures the program can continue for another 5 years.
Over the five-year period, 8 to 10 students per summer will work with a faculty mentor on a research project as well as attend professional development and enrichment seminars. Participants will also have a grad mentor to guide them throughout their experience.
“It (CDA REU) really solidified my choice of continuing on for my bachelor’s. Participating in professional development, as well as being in an environment where I’m surrounded by my peers who are ambitious and passionate about what they’re doing, has inspired me to emulate the same traits. It has also opened the avenue of studying data science for me since I haven’t thought deeply about exploring it,” said Farhiya Abdalla, an undergraduate student at Ohio State University and an alum of the 2024 CDA REU cohort.
The new award is overseen by Angela Green-Miller, Christina Tucker and Mohammed Kamruzzman of the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign and Christopher Anderson of Dominican University. The program will be housed and managed at the U. of I., with partners from Dominican University, who will use their network from the former NSF-funded Promotion of Underrepresented Minorities in Academic STEM (PUMA-STEM) Alliance program to help recruit for the CDA REU program.
“The CDA REU program creates opportunities for students to experience research at the intersection of the computing and biological sciences. With this new USDA REEU award, DATA SMART Systems will focus on applications of cutting-edge digital technologies to improve efficiency and understanding of agricultural systems fundamentals. We will bring together a cohort of students who can learn from one another’s experiences while conducting their own independent research projects with a faculty mentor. With a priority on balancing student selection to include those with limited access to research, the DATA SMART Systems REEU will create and strengthen connections across the academic landscape and hopefully reveal a career path for students they otherwise might not have considered. We’re looking forward to bringing in the first group supported by this award in summer 2027,” said Angela Green-Miller, PI for DATA SMART Systems and associate professor of Agricultural and Biological Engineering at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign.
DATA SMART Systems was created to promote diversity in the digital agriculture workforce and increase fluency in digital technologies and applications for agriculture. A key objective for the program is to foster research exploration for motivated students in STEM while also demonstrating that there is a path for undergraduate students to succeed in graduate school and the research industry. The program will recruit students from a variety of majors, including but not limited to: engineering, computer science, crop/plant science, biology, animal science, agricultural sciences, technology management, or other related majors.
“One of the pillars of CDA’s mission is workforce development. CDA has run a REU program for the last six years. We were previously funded by the National Science Foundation (NSF) and will now be continuing the program thanks to this funding from USDA. The goal of the CDA REU program is to give exposure to digital agriculture research and career opportunities to students from a broad range of backgrounds. In recent years, we have seen our application pool grow to more than 250 students, and we want to be able to give this opportunity to as many of the interested students as possible. This also gives more opportunity for our 100 faculty affiliates to provide project ideas for the student summer research projects and showcase the breadth of digital ag research on the U. of I. campus,” said Christina Tucker, managing director and REU program coordinator at the Center for Digital Agriculture.
Applications for the 2027 CDA REU cohort will open later this fall. For more information and to sign up for the mailing list to be notified when applications open, visit https://digitalag.illinois.edu/education/reu-program/.