Center for Digital Agriculture

Vikram AdveDr. Vikram Adve, Center for Digital Agriculture, Principal Investigator and Director

  • Co-Founder and Co-Director of the Center for Digital Agriculture (CDA) at Illinois, an interdisciplinary institute with 48 affiliate faculty members, and strong education programming in Digital Agriculture
  • Donald B. Gillies Professor, University of Illinois Scholar, and former Interim Head of Computer Science Department at the University of Illinois
  • Fellow of the Association for Computer Machinery
  • Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) Software System Award for co-developing LLVM

Elizabeth AinsworthDr. Elizabeth Ainsworth, U.S. Department of Agriculture, Agricultural Research Service (USDA-ARS), co-PI

  • Research Plant Physiologist for the U.S. Department of Agriculture, Agricultural Research Service (USDA-ARS)
  • Adjunct professor of plant biology and crop sciences at the University of Illinois
  • Elected to the American Association for the Advancement of Science in 2019
  • Honored with the 2019 National Academy of Sciences (NAS) Prize in Food and Agriculture Sciences
  • Elected to the National Academy of Sciences in 2020

Bruno BassoDr. Bruno Basso, Michigan State University, Partner Lead

  • Foundation Professor
  • Fellow of the Soil Science Society of America and the American Society of Agronomy
  • MSU Innovation of the Year award in 2016, which lead to the commercialization of some aspects of his research and the foundation of a start-up company called CiBO Technologies which recently received the Forbes Impact Award

Olga Bolden-TillerDr. Olga Bolden-Tiller, Tuskegee University, Partner Lead

Girish ChowdharyDr. Girish Chowdhary, Associate Director, Research

  • Founding Director of the Field Robotics Engineering and Science Hub (FRESH) at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
  • Co-founder of EarthSEnse, Inc. Recipient of NSF SBIR Phase 2, and over $1M in venture funds
  • Recipient of the Dave Ward Memorial Award for contributions to adaptive flight control

Supratik GuhaDr. Supratik Guha, Associate Director, Technology Transfer & Industry Engagement

  • Director, Nanoscience and Technology Division Argonne National Laboratory
  • Senior Advisor to the Physical Sciences and Engineering Directorate, Argonne National Laboratory
  • Member of the National Academy of Engineering
  • Fellow of Material Research Society
  • Recipient of the 2015 Prize for Industrial Application of Physics

Matt HudsonDr. Matt Hudson, Center for Digital Agriculture, Liaison

  • Co-Director of the Center for Digital Agriculture (CDA) at Illinois
  • Professor in the Department of Crop Sciences at the University of Illinois
  • Principal investigator of the Mayo-Illinois Grand Challenge program

Madhu KhannaDr. Madhu Khanna, Associate Director, Technology Adoption & Public Policy

  • Interim Director for Education and Outreach, Institute for Sustainability, Energy, and the Environment (ISEE) at University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign comprised of more than 80 faculty and staff members, and five research themes
  • ACES Distinguished Professor in Environmental Economics
  • Sustainability Theme Lead, Center for Advanced Bioenergy and Bioproducts (CABBI), University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

Todd MocklerDr. Todd Mockler, Associate Director, Research

  • Geraldine and Robert Virgil Distinguished Investigator, Donald Danforth Plant Science Center
  • Co-founder Benson Hill Biosystems
  • Director, ARPA-E Transportation Energy Resources for Renewable Agriculture Phenotyping Reference Platform (TERRA-REF)

Alex SchwingDr. Alex Schwing, Associate Director of Research

  • Assistant professor in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
  • Affiliated with the Coordinated Science Laboratory and the Computer Science Department
  • Former postdoctoral fellow in the Machine Learning Group at University of Toronto collaborating with Raquel Urtasun, Rich Zemel and Ruslan Salakhutdinov

Tiffani WilliamsDr. Tiffani Williams, Associate Director, Education and Outreach

  • Teaching Professor, Computer Science, and Director, Illinois Computer Accelerator for Non-Specialists
  • Denice Denton Emerging Leader ABIE Award
  • Past Professor of the Practice and Director, Computer Science Programs at Northeastern University, Charlotte
  • Past Director, ALIGN Program, Northeastern University, Charlotte
  • Radcliffe Institute Fellowship
United States Department of Agriculture National Institute of Food and Agriculture The Artificial Intelligence for Future Agricultural Resilience, Management, and Sustainability (AIFARMS) Institute is supported by the USDA National Institute of Food and Agriculture and the National Science Foundation.