Agricultural Engineer
Research Interests
My research emphasizes interdisciplinary approaches to address critical issues in agricultural production systems. This work ranges from developing mechanistic soil-plant-atmospheric mathematical models, providing computerized decision support for agricultural and environmental challenges, and improving and optimizing crop production systems in field and controlled environments. I currently lead a team of expert scientists with respect to mechanistic crop and soil model development, evaluation, and application, and agronomic experimental research on environmental stress. I have over 20 years of hands-on experience working with economically important crops in laboratory and field settings. Since 2001, I have worked with state-of-the-art plant growth chambers and monitoring systems to develop, modify, and apply physiologically-based crop production models. This includes development of novel conceptual paradigms to explain how factors influencing plant production at one level of hierarchy (e.g. leaf level) scale up to the entire plant, field, and, ultimately, regional level. My current research includes assessing impacts of climate change and abiotic constraints (e.g. rainfall, soil quality, land use) on food security issues using geospatially referenced data and modeling tools.
