The Center for Digital Agriculture (CDA), at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (UIUC) is a catalyst for collaborative research projects across engineering and agriculture. With a strong record of team building for large long-term interdisciplinary research and education projects at the University of Illinois, CDA continues to offer a competitive seed-funding program. The newly-announced collaborative projects span two or more of the Center’s initial themes: Automation, Data, Animals and Crops, and People.
Situated at the confluence of engineering expertise and agriculture innovation, Illinois and the CDA are favorably positioned to advance the growing relationship between agriculture and technology, growing off of Illinois’ strong land grant tradition. Selected research projects aim to cover a wide range of domains within these areas, from animal science and bioengineering to advertising and journalism, highlighting the versatility of the Center and their aspirations to branch out and expand upon their central themes.
This year, 12 research projects were selected to receive one year of seed funding from the CDA to carry out and expand upon collaborative research at the confluence of agriculture and technology. This is the second round of funding to be offered by the Center.
“One of the most exciting opportunities in CDA is the potential to enable new research collaborations that combine technology and agriculture disciplines to tackle important challenges facing humanity,” said Vikram Adve, Co-Director of CDA and Donald B. Gillies Professor of Computer Science at UIUC. “The twelve teams funded in this round show that we can innovate in both aspects when we work together.”
