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AI in Agriculture: Innovation and Discovery to Equitably meet Producer Needs and Perceptions

2023 AI Conference • April 17-19, 2023 • Marriott Orlando Airport Lakeside • Orlando, FL

AI in Agriculture: Innovation and Discovery to Equitably meet Producer Needs and Perceptions

2023 AI Conference • April 17-19, 2023 • Marriott Orlando Airport Lakeside • Orlando, FL

Workshops and Sessions

• Keynote • Pre-Conference Workshop • Panels •

Announcing Our Keynote Speaker

We are honored to announce our keynote speaker for the 2023 AI in Ag Conference will be Chris Malachowsky.
Chris Malachowsky founded NVIDIA in 1993 and has more than 40 years of industry experience. He serves as a member of the executive staff and a senior technology executive for the company. The University of Florida granted Chris an honorary doctorate in Technology in 2022.
Malachowsky has been instrumental in managing, defining and driving the company’s core technologies as it has grown from a startup to the global leader in visual and parallel computing. As an executive at NVIDIA, he has led numerous functions, including IT, operations and all facets of the company’s product engineering. Most recently, he was responsible for NVIDIA’s world-class research organization, which is chartered with developing the strategic technologies that will help drive the company’s future growth and success.
A recognized authority on integrated-circuit design and methodology, he has authored close to 40 patents. He holds a BSEE degree from the University of Florida and an MSCS degree from Santa Clara University. Both schools have honored Malachowsky with Distinguished Alumnus awards. He also received an honorary doctorate in technology from the University of Silicon Valley in 2022. Beyond his technical accomplishments, Malachowsky has also received an Emmy for a film he helped produce, Inheritance, that won Best Documentary in 2009. He was also inducted into the Florida Inventors Hall of Fame in 2019.
Malachowsky and NVIDIA have been strong supporters of agriculture with their technology providing innovative advancements, including an acceleration platform delivering AI startups with go-to-market support, expertise, and technology. NVIDIA has also been instrumental in supporting the latest in technology to academic and research programs globally, as can be seen through their NVIDIA Academic Hardware Grant Program. Currently, NVIDIA’s and Chris’s investment at University of Florida has been transformative with state-of-the-art computing, NVDIA in-house expertise, and the new Malachowsky Hall for Data Science and Information Technology.

Pre-Conference Workshop

Pre-conference workshop: AI in agriculture: Let's write a modern thesis!

Instructors: Thanos Gentimis (LSU), Leticia Santos (LSU)

In this hands-on workshop, Thanos Gentimis and Leticia Santos will present a full description of what a modern thesis could look like for a PhD student in agriculture, incorporating data intensive techniques, with an emphasis on AI based methodologies (Random Forests and Neural Networks). The instructors will give a step-by-step description of the process and go over various data synthesis codes that incorporate images (drones, satelites), weather data (temperature precipitation), soil data (including micronutrients, organic matter composition, etc), as well as various phenotypic indices throughout the growing season. Then the instructors will present a full ML implementation through Python for yield prediction based on all that information. Prior to the workshop, the attendees will receive full instructions on how to install the necessary software (Python through the Anaconda distribution), and they will be given access to an online repository with all the data (synthetic) and codes for the workshop. There are no pre-requisites for this apart from enthusiasm and patience.

To register for this event, complete the google form.

Panels

Parameters for the sustainable data management framework in sustainable ag: an industry perspective

Moderator: Max Teplitski, Ph.D. Chief Science Officer, International Fresh Produce Association

Description: The panel will highlight the urgent need to align data acquisition and data management in climate-smart agriculture from the field to a thriving marketplace that equitably rewards producers for the adoption of ESG practices.   Harmonization and standardization of measurements of carbon sequestration and GHG fluxes, quantification of social and governance practices, curating and transforming data, tracking ESG commitments, investments and outputs through the supply chain and ensuring economically meaningful framework for the ESG marketplace will be discussed.  Finally, considerations for equitable return to those who contribute data to models (either public or those used by for-profit entities) will be discussed.

Panel Organizer:

Dr. Max Teplitski

Chief Science Officer, International Fresh Produce Association

 Dr. Max Teplitski is a Chief Science Officer at the International Fresh Produce Association (IFPA), where he is responsible for the science, ag. technology, supply chain and sustainability programs. Prior to joining IFPA, Dr. Teplitski was Division Director (Acting) and National Program Leader at the USDA National Institute of Food and Agriculture, where he oversaw federal research investment portfolios in produce safety, microbiology and nutrition. An author of over 100 peer-reviewed publications, Dr. Teplitski was a Professor at the University of Florida. Dr. Teplitski served as a Fulbright Specialist in Agriculture (Escuela Politecnica del Litoral), U.S. Embassy Science Fellow, Biotech Outreach Speaker (U.S. Department of State), and G.E. Burch Fellow in Theoretical Medicine (Smithsonian Institution). He is a recipient of J.E. Feeley Award in Recognition of Significant Contributions in Environmental Microbiology, UF-HHMI Science For Life Distinguished Mentor Award, Animal Conservation Award (Lindberg Foundation), and W.E. Krauss Director’s Award for Excellence in Research (Ohio Agricultural Research and Development Center). He is a board member of the Center for Produce Safety. He is also a Courtesy Faculty at the UF Plant Pathology Department.

Panelists:

Dr. Molly Brown

CSO, 6th Grain Corporation

 Molly E Brown is the Chief Science Officer of 6th Grain Corporation, a digital agriculture company based in the United States. Dr. Brown has a PhD and Masters in Geography and a Bachelors of Science in Biology. Molly has twenty years of experience in interdisciplinary research using satellite remote sensing data and models with socio-economic and demographic information to better understand food security drivers and agriculture. She has published over 120 journal articles in a variety of disciplines and has two books. In 2015, she was the lead author of a US Climate Assessment report published by the US Department of Agriculture entitled ‘Climate Change, Global Food Security and the U.S. Food System’.

Aaron Hutchinson

President & Co-Founder, CropTrak

Since co-founding CropTrak in 2009, Aaron Hutchinson has led its continuous evolution to remain on the forefront of raw source supply chain data management for the food industries. Leveraging his deep farming roots and data science experience, CropTrak helps food companies collect, process and report crop, contract, research and ESG data – digitally in real-time – for more than 73 identity-preserved and specialty crops in 57 countries worldwide. Previously, Aaron worked for NAVAIR as a senior imagery engineer, designing and delivering geospatial technology for four branches of the U.S. military, Special Operations Command and U.S. intelligence agencies. This experience gave him in-depth exposure to how technology must flex to harsh environmental conditions, support easy adoption by in-field users and ensure real-time accuracy to minimize risk.

Martha Montoya

CEO, AgTools

 With over 30 years of worldwide IT/Telecommunications/Food/Agricultural and Supply Chain experience, Martha's career in the agricultural industry started while sourcing ingredients from the Americas. This provided her with the knowledge of the product from the source to delivery and ultimately becoming a leader in the industry, traveling while delivering projects beneficial for the supplier and customers on 4 continents. Dealing with both small and industrial size farms, government entities and sophisticated buyers in Europe, Russia and the United States, she has set up production lines across many crops and commodities. Today she leads Agtools, a Machine Learning and Artificial Intelligence award winner, a SaaS and enterprise firm that delivers global food & agricultural financial and market intelligence data. Agtools offers trusted official data from around the world, in real-time data for farmers and buyers to manage market volatility, increase profitability, and reduce the world’s food waste and CO2, and SO2 footprint. Formal education in Chemistry and Biology with post graduate courses at the University of Chicago, the Tuck School of Business at Dartmouth, Stanford University Entrepreneurial and Scalability program and the UC Davis Institute for Food, Ag & Health Entrepreneurship.

Dr. Jeff Orrey

Founder and CSO, Geovisual Analytics

 Jeff is the Founder and Chief Science Officer of GeoVisual Analytics, where he is leading the development
of new capabilities for GeoVisual’s analytics platform for precision agriculture. Before founding GeoVisual,
Jeff was a Lead Program Manager at Microsoft, directing a team to develop and deploy the Bing Maps
Server, a private-cloud version of Microsoft’s Bing Maps that today is the mapping platform for New York
City's counter-terrorism system. As the lead scientist at another startup, Jeff led development of data
analysis technologies that were sold to a Chevron-backed company that is now the worldwide leader in
real-time hydraulic fracture monitoring. Jeff holds a Ph.D. in Physics and has served as a Science and
Technology Policy Fellow at the U.S. Agency for International Development.

Stakeholder Panel Discussion

Moderator: Joby Sherrod, Director of Agronomy ALICO Incorporated

Description: Coming soon

Panelists: