News / Center News / October 21, 2024

ASC Director chosen to give the American Society of Agronomy Plenary Distinguished Lectureship on AI Innovations for a Changing Climate

Kaiyu Guan, the Founding Director of the ASC Founding Director will deliver the Plenary Distinguished Lectureship at the annual meeting of the American Society of Agronomy.

(Photo by Fred Zwicky / University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign)

Kaiyu Guan, the Founding Director of the Agroecosystem Sustainability Center (ASC) and a professor of Natural Resources and Environmental Sciences at the University of Illinois, has been selected as the American Society of Agronomy (ASA) Plenary E.T. and Vam York Distinguished Lectureship at the ASA annual meeting. The international annual meeting is the largest gathering of soil, crop, and agronomic scientists in the world.

It will be presented at the annual meeting of the ASA, the Crop Science Society of America, and the Soil Science Society of America on Nov. 10-13, 2024, in San Antonio, Texas. This conference is the most important gathering for agricultural scientists in the US and globe, for exchanging and sharing ideas, solutions, and innovation from across the field of agricultural sciences.

Guan will deliver an address titled SYMFONI: The “System-of-Systems” Solution to Quantify Soil Carbon and GHG Outcomes for the U.S. Croplands. Guan is the project leader of SYMFONI, an ARPA-E SMARTFARM project, which advanced the first-of-its-kind system-level quantification of greenhouse emissions for agroecosystems from field to continental scales. His group has developed accurate and scalable quantification of soil carbon and greenhouse gas emissions for corn, soybeans, spring and winter wheat, cotton, rice, pastureland, and miscanthus fields.

Guan founded and directs ASC, which has a mission to revolutionize agricultural systems through research, collaboration, and engagement, bridging science and practice for agricultural productivity and ecosystem sustainability. He is also the Chief Scientist for the NASA Acres Program. His research group uses computational models, satellite data, field work, and artificial intelligence to address how climate and human practices affect crop productivity, water resource availability, and ecosystem functioning. Guan’s group aims to increase our society’s resilience and adaptability to maintain sustainability of ecosystem services, food security and water resources.

About the Agroecosystem Sustainability Center (ASC): The Agroecosystem Sustainability Center was founded in 2021 to lead global efforts in harmonizing sustainable food production with thriving ecosystems. The Center strives to revolutionize agricultural systems through research, collaboration, and engagement, bridging science and practice for agricultural productivity and ecosystem sustainability. Centered in the heart of Midwest on the campus of the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign under the umbrella of both the College of Agriculture, and Environmental Sciences (ACES) and the Institute of Sustainability, Energy, and the Environment (iSEE), ASC is positioned at the critical intersection of academia, industry, policy, and on-the-ground practice. ASC is creating a diverse and dynamic hub for driving change and is committed to transforming its research into practical and scalable solutions, fortifying our ecosystems, bolstering farm profitability, and empowering agricultural systems to proactively mitigate and adapt to the realities of climate change.

Media Contact: Mike Koon, ASC Communication Lead (mkoon@illinois.edu)