Workshop on US-India Research Initiatives and Opportunities in Digital Agriculture
Workshop Date: December 18, 2023
Summary
This US-India Collaboration in Digital Ag Workshop/BOF Session is a full day, in-person workshop at the HiPC Conference in Goa, India on Monday December 18, 2023. The day will feature several invited talks, an industry session, breakout group discussions, and a panel, with participants from US and Indian academia, government, and industry sectors. This workshop follows a successful Birds of a Feather session at HiPC’22.
Goals:
- Identify major areas and specific topics where AI and data science technologies can help within the Indian agriculture ecosystem
- Identify new opportunities to set up R&D initiatives toward a stronger U.S.-India R&D collaboration in digital agriculture
The workshop will cover several topics in digital agriculture including (but not limited to) precision agriculture, ag robotics, climate impacts on agriculture and resource management, geospatial informatics, optimization in food supply chain, accessible/affordable technologies, data sharing policies, workforce training, and AI literacy. The event is open to all registered attendees at HiPC.
Technical Program
December 18, 2023, 8:30 am to 6 pm IST
Opening and Welcome remarks by workshop organizers (8:30 – 8:45 am)
Ananth Kalyanaraman, Jordan Jobe, Soumik Sarkar, Shivakumar Sastry
Session 1: U.S. based AI Institutes (8:45 – 10:15 am )
(session chair: Ananth Kalyanaraman)
Speakers:
Vikram Adve, AIFARMS, U. Illinois Urbana-Champaign. “AIFARMS: Artificial Intelligence for Future Agricultural Resilience, Management, and Sustainability.”
Soumik Sarkar, AIIRA, Iowa State Univ. “AI-enabled digital twins for resilient and climate smart agriculture.”
DK Panda, ICICLE, The Ohio State Univ. “Overview of the Digital Agriculture Activities in the ICICLE NSF-AI Institute”
Raju Vatsavai, AI-CLIMATE, North Carolina State Univ. “Recent Advances in AI for
Forest Monitoring Using Global Earth Observations.”
Ananth Kalyanaraman, AgAID, Washington State Univ. “AgAID: AI for farm, labor, and water intelligence in agriculture”
Coffee Break (10:15 – 10:45 am)
Session 2: AI R&D in Digital Agriculture in India (10:45 am – 12:00 pm)
(session chair: Adarsh Krishnamurthy)
Speakers:
Sunita Choudhary, ICRISAT. “AI for crop trait inference from sensor-data to support development of climate resilient and nutrient-enhanced crops.”
Raghu Murtugudde, IIT Bombay. “Agricultural advisories using AI/ML for downscaling weather and climate forecasts.” (tentative/to be confirmed)
Rajbabu Velmurugan, IIT Bombay/TIH. “AI/ML research for agriculture at TIH IIT-B” (tentative title)
Alkesh Wadhwani, Gates Foundation. “Large Scale Digital Agriculture projects in the public sector in India”
Session 3: Industry Session (12:00 – 1 pm)
(session chair: Shivakumar Sastry)
Nikita Saxena, Google Research, India
Praveen Pankajakshan, CropIn, India
Siddharth Tata, Amazon Fresh & Kisan, Amazon India
Lunch (1:00 – 2:00 pm)
Session 4: Panel: US-India opportunities (2:00 – 3:45 pm)
Discussion of varied challenges that come up in the Indian ag sector, including data, access sharing, training, and discussion of tools from the US that could be deployed/tested in India, with a focus on near-term opportunities for collaboration and innovation in Indian Agriculture.
(panel moderator: Ananth Kalyanaraman)
Panelists:
Suhel Bidani, Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation
Kamakshi Chaithri, Dept. Biotechnology, Govt. India
Girish Chowdhary, AIFARMS, U. Illinois Urbana-Champaign
Adarsh Krishnamurthy, AIIRA, Iowa State Univ.
Siddharth Tata, Amazon Fresh & Kisan, Amazon India
Coffee Break (3:45 – 4:15 pm )
Session 5: Small group discussion (4:15 – 6:00 pm)
(session moderator: Soumik Sarkar)
Small group facilitators: Ananth Kalyanaraman, Soumik Sarkar, Vikram Adve
Interactive session in break-out group format. All attendees are invited to participate.
Closing remarks and adjourn (6:00pm )
Workshop Organizers
Jordan Jobe, Washington State University and AgAID Institute, USA
Ananth Kalyanaraman, Washington State University and AgAID Institute, USA
Soumik Sarkar, Iowa State University and AIIRA Institute, USA
Shivakumar Sastry, Dayanand Sagar University, India