Date: Monday, 6 April 2020
Time: 8:30am-6:30pm
Room: Newberry Room
Description
Agricultural technologies are used across the entire agri-food supply chain – from the planting of seeds to the harvesting of crops, breeding livestock and treating disease, transporting goods and managing commercial sales, where agricultural innovations have a role to play at every stage. Agricultural science and technology is rapidly becoming one of the world’s fastest growing and exciting markets. It is driven by global changes: a rising population, rapid development of emerging economies with western lifestyle aspirations and growing geopolitical instability around shortages of land, water and energy. A technology revolution is also taking place. Breakthroughs in nutrition, genetics, informatics, satellite imaging, remote sensing, meteorology, precision farming and low impact agriculture mean agricultural technologies have huge potential for development. Also, the scale of farming worldwide has changed significantly in recent years, with a move towards larger, intensive, profit-driven enterprises due to market pressures. This has resulted in demand for cost and labor reducing advanced farm automation technologies which can increase farm productivity. This step change has resulted in a demand for technologies and equipment which can reduce costs and labor inputs with concurrent increases in capacity to provide economies of scale. These economies of scale however will not yield profit unless quality is maintained and this is a central focus of any new technologies developed for the sector. The WF will explore how Internet of Things technologies contribute to address all of these challenges through improvements in yield and efficiency with discussions from renowned experts in academia, industry, and the public sector.
Our meeting location of New Orleans, Louisiana is representative of the diversity in agriculture, with soybeans, cattle, aquaculture, feed grains, horses, sugar cane, poultry, rice and fisheries making up the top ten largest commodities. The state is home to 28 thousand farms spread over 8 million acres with a $3.8 billion annual economic impact. Regional speakers will highlight technology advancements important to the area.
Track Co-Chairs
Mehmet Can Vuran, University of Nebraska – Lincoln, NE USA
Mehmet Can (Jon) Vuran received his B.Sc. degree in Electrical and Electronics Engineering from Bilkent University, Ankara, Turkey in 2002. He received his M.S. and Ph.D. degrees in Electrical and Computer Engineering from Georgia Institute of Technology in 2004 and 2007, respectively.
Currently, he is the Susan J. Rosowski Professor of Computer Science and Engineering at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. Dr. Vuran received an NSF CAREER award in 2010 for “Bringing Wireless Sensor Networks Underground”. In 2014, 2015, and 2016, he was named a highly-cited researcher in computer science by Thomson Reuters. He received a Parents Recognition Award from UNL Parent’s Association in 2016. He is the co-author of Wireless Sensor Networks textbook, TPC Co-Chair of IEEE INFOCOM 2020, and an editor in Computer Networks Journal, IEEE Transactions on Mobile Computing, and IEEE Communications Surveys and Tutorials Journal. His current research interests include Internet of Things, underground communications, cognitive radio networks, and cyber-physical networks.
Tom Penning, CEO, Irrometer Company, Inc. Riverside, CA USA
Tom Penning is the CEO of Irrometer Co., Inc., a USA based manufacturer and global supplier of soil moisture measurement equipment, primarily used in irrigated agriculture. During 30 years of experience in the irrigation industry, he has worked in both the manufacturing and supply chain segments of the business. Irrometer has developed and deployed numerous automated telemetry systems to gather field soil moisture data for farmers. Irrometer’s sensors are also used by many original equipment manufacturers in their data collection and control systems. Since its inception, Tom has been on the ASABE (American Society of Agricultural and Biological Engineering) and AgGateway committees for agricultural data standards development, an effort to streamline integration and adoption of IoT technology in agriculture.
Speakers
Kevin Jones, Business Development for Bosch.IO in North America
Kevin Jones is the Head of Business Development for Bosch.IO in North America. He comes with a background in industrial engineering combined with more than five years of experience in IoT platforms and their adoption to different markets and domains like Energy, Agriculture and Manufacturing.
Tanja Lewit, PC&S Inc
Tanja Lewit- is founding member of PC&S Inc, a company that manufactures and Supplies Electrical Equipment for the Measurement and Control of Power. Serving as a Principal under the firm specializes in Power Measurement and AC and DC Control Systems. PC&S has partnered with customers to design, develop, manufacture and distribute Instrumentation Solutions for industries including US Military, Power Generation Manufacturers, Industrial Equipment, Transit Systems and Data Center Infrastructure. In 2010 Tanja has taken her passion for new technology – forming Alternate E Source; a company providing solutions to the Data Center space, and the growing need for maintaining compliance, uptime, and efficiency. Introduced in Oct 2013 – the focus changed to “Internet of Things” and new monitoring platforms. Environmental monitoring, physical security for IT server rooms, distributed equipment management and systems protection , IoT technology systems that reports with phone app, for increased security of physical environment, power, network and more. At the helm of Alternate E Source, Tanja continues to provide client success in numerous new verticals and has expanded services to meet the growing needs of IoT in critical infrastructure applications. As an avid speaker on IoT as past presenter: SPEAKING ENGAGEMENTS Nagios World Showcase – Fall 2014 NJTC Smart Building Technologies- Panel Moderator Sept 14, 2014 NJTC Women in Technology- June 2015 AFCOM Data Center World Spring 2015 AFCOM Data Center World Fall 2015 IoT Evolution -Security Panel (AXIS, Cisco IoT) Spring 2016 DCD Enterprise NYC IIoT and IoT Security Spring 2017 WEEC Charlotte, NC Oct 17-19, 2018 (Educational Track)-Future Trends: Metering in the New IoT Landscape IoT Grand Slam Virtual Conference December 11, 2018 New Degrees of Security – IoT Innovation for Infrastructure.