Building the future of digital agriculture

Every summer, the Center for Digital Agriculture (CDA), an NCSA partner organization, hosts a group of students on the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign (U. of I.) campus as part of the CDA Research Experiences for Undergraduates (REU) program. This is the fifth year of the program, and CDA continues to attract students from around the country to this unique opportunity. This year, the program hosted 14 students, bringing the total number of students hosted to 62.

“We want to give students opportunities for research that they may not get in their home institutions,” said Christina Tucker, the CDA REU program coordinator. “We want to recruit students from multiple disciplines to work with our faculty on campus to inspire them to pursue digital agriculture as a future career as a graduate student or in industry.”

The CDA REU program students work on real projects, many of which include ongoing agricultural research to improve production and sustainability. These students are paired with mentors from the U. of I. who are experts in their field. The program is designed to inspire students to consider digital agriculture as a possible career path, making the CDA REU program a powerful workforce development program. Many of these students will have gained valuable experience that demonstrates their potential in the field of digital agriculture.

In addition to the research experience, the students also receive several hours of professional development training on topics like scientific writing, communication and research ethics. The program concludes with the students giving Science Slam presentations at the STEM Career Exploration and Symposium, and then a poster at the end of the summer event hosted by CDA. Some students also opt to continue working with their mentors after the paid experience ends to work toward a conference presentation and/or journal article. 

De’Janique Lambeth is one of the students in this year’s program. She’s currently studying animal science at Langston University. She decided to apply for a spot in the program based on the recommendation of her advisor at Langston, Carlos Alvarado. “I’ve always been interested in the digital side of agriculture,” she said.

Lambeth has been paired with two mentors, Angela Green-Miller, an associate professor in the agricultural and biological engineering department, and Heidi Rinehart, a graduate student pursuing her master’s degree in animal sciences. The project Lambeth has been assigned to is designing a computer recognition model that monitors the behavior of pregnant pigs. The idea is to train a model for physical signs that a pig is in respiratory distress. If the models are able to detect these signs at the earliest stages of distress, the pig can be treated sooner, giving it a greater chance of delivering a healthy brood of piglets.

Lambeth’s work involves training the model based on pig posture and what that might indicate about the pig’s health. “In my project, I’m creating a computer vision model that looks for four postures of pigs that may indicate illness,” said Lambeth. The model being trained will look for how a pig sits, lies down or kneels, and will watch for signs that the mother pig might be sick.

Lambeth has learned a lot about the work that she hadn’t known prior to being a part of the program, including being able to see the pigs where they’re monitored. “My favorite part of this experience has been getting to know about all the different aspects of digital agriculture,” she said.

I recommend this program to other students to push them out of their comfort zone, learn something new and apply their skills.

–De’Janique Lambeth, CDA REU student

Cole Wycislak recently graduated from Moraine Valley Community College (MVCC) with an associate’s degree in science. He’s transferring to U. of I. to continue his studies in plant biotechnology. Unlike Lambeth, he found out about the program through a friend who highly recommended it. “I decided to apply to the CDA REU program because one of my friends at MVCC said good things about it when she was a part of the program, and I figured that it would be smart for me to apply since I had plans of transferring to U. of I.,” said Wycislak.

Wycislak is working on a project titled “Making the Unbe-leaf-able a Reality: a Next-generation Crop Canopy for Tomorrow’s Agriculture.” He’s joining mentors Tony Studer, an associate professor in crop sciences, and Matthew Runyon, a Ph.D. student in crop science. As the summer program comes to a close, Wycislak has high praise for the mentoring. “Matthew Runyon has been so instrumental to my experience,” said Wycislak. “He has guided me through everything I have learned this summer, and training under him gives me the confidence to join the Studer Lab this upcoming fall semester!”

Wycislak speaks enthusiastically about his work on the project, proving the program was a great match for him. “For the duration of this summer experience,” said Wycislak, “I have been working with my mentor in characterizing a leaf mutation that we call RDLA, which stands for reduced leaf area. I think it’s really awesome that during this experience, I got to see all the corn crops grow, from kernel to full-sized plant now! It is also really cool to be able to see visually the difference between normal corn crops and those that carry the RDLA gene.”

As the program finishes up, now it’s Wycislak’s turn to spread the word about his time as a CDA REU student. “I would absolutely recommend this experience to others,” he said. “I think it was really good for me to get out of my comfort zone and learn a little bit more about a career I am interested in. I would recommend this experience to anyone who wants to get more experience in digital agriculture.”

After being in the program, I definitely think that a career in digital agriculture is a worthwhile career, especially after learning so much about it during this experience.

–Cole Wycislak, CDA REU student

Dimitry Ermakov applied to the program to help prepare himself for graduate school. He’s currently studying applied mathematics at Hillsdale College, but his plans are to use what he learns in the CDA REU program to help him continue on his educational path. “The program offered research in a field (robotics) that I want to go into for grad school,” he said. He’s been paired with mentors Yuxiong Wang, an assistant professor in computer science, and one of Wang’s Ph.D. students, Liuyu Bian. Ermakov’s project involves machine learning. “My research group is evaluating LLM (large language models) on agriculture and trying to improve the performance of said models with the implementation of Retrieval Augmented Generation pipeline,” he explained.

Ermakov has a lot of praise for the program, including some surprising takeaways. He said the best part was the opportunity to explore a large campus. “I am from a small college, so it was quite interesting to see how a large college operated.” Ermakov was also glad that he didn’t have to worry about the basics. He mentioned that the CDA REU program took care of things like food and housing, and that the internship even came with a paycheck. “You are paid to learn, it looks great on a resume and it is an unforgettable experience,” he said.

You can find the full list of CDA REU students and their projects here.

Applications for the 2026 cohort will open in November. Any students interested in applying to the program can join a mailing list to get notified when the application opens here. 

This program is supported by NSF proposal #2244580 REU Site: Drivers for Machine Learning and Artificial Intelligence Practices (MAPs), USDA NIFA Grant # 2024-38821-42057: Establishing Foundations for AI-Driven Innovation in Sustainable Dairy Farming, the Center for Digital Agriculture, Artificial Intelligence for Future Agricultural Resilience, Management, and Sustainability (AIFARMS), and Center for Research on Programmable Plant Systems (CROPPS).

ABOUT CENTER FOR DIGITAL AGRICULTURE

The Center for Digital Agriculture (CDA) draws on Illinois’ historic land-grant pillars of agriculture and engineering to shape the future of the agriculture industry. The center brings together researchers, educators, industry and agricultural producers to transform how we feed and support a growing global population through innovative approaches. CDA also boasts a Master of Engineering in Digital Agriculture and six certificate programs that address the profound workforce shortage in this field by providing graduates and working professionals with in-depth knowledge and technical skills. CDA is a multidisciplinary effort at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign between the Grainger College of Engineering, the College of Agricultural, Consumer and Environmental Sciences and the National Center for Supercomputing Applications. CDA also leads the Artificial Intelligence for Future Agricultural Resilience, Management, and Sustainability (AIFARMS) Institute which is supported by the USDA National Institute of Food and Agriculture and the National Science Foundation. CDA also leads the U. of I. sub-award for the Center for Research on Programmable Plant Systems (CROPPS), which is supported by the National Science Foundation.