Affiliates
ID3A is proud to partner with experts across K-State. Learn more about our partners below.
The Institute for Digital Agriculture and Advanced Analytics is reimagining what it means to be an affiliate of the institute. Our affiliates enjoy a wide range of benefits, including:
- Access to a wide network at the university who share an interest in digital agriculture and advanced analytics
- First priority for research colloboration within our network, along with partnering on educational opportunities such as workshops, trainings and microcredentials
- Opportunity to engage with other affiliates and professionals at ID3A hosted events and get-togethers
Learn more and become an affiliate today by emailing id3a@ksu.edu or filling out the affiliate application form.
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Avocat is a geographer with an expertise in GIS, cartography and mapping and spatial analysis and modeling. |
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Caldas is an economic-environmental geographer with interest in landuse and landcover change. His work involves a combination of techniques (spatial analysis, econometrics models and land systems science) in understanding land use decisions, management and conservation. |
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Abhilekha Dalal CAIDS in Department of Computer Science Dalal's expertise is in explainable AI, data modeling, neural network optimization supports digital agriculture and analytics. She contributed to ontology integration for KnowWhereGraph and systematic reviews for BioWRAP applying AI to enhance agricultural insights and datadriven decisions. |
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Melanie Derby
Derby’s research focuses on the food, energy, and water nexus, including evaporation from porous media (e.g., soils), sustainable energy and resilient rural communities. She is passionate about interdisciplinary graduate student training and interdisciplinary research teams. |
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Dodds has experience in long-term water quality data, riparian ecology and stream ecology, as well as work with cattle grazing and riparian protection. |
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Flynn studies foreign policy, foreign aid, and security issues, and is interested in the intersection between these topics and agriculture. He also has expertise in data science, statistical modeling and Bayesian methods. |
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Gnad is a small business owner and entrepreneurial- minded program manager who previously served as a director of marketing and government affairs. She has additional experience as a co-owner of a Kansas crop consulting business and farming operation. She also has operated her own marketing, events and digital media consulting venture. |
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Doug Goodin Goodin specializes in remote sensing, geospatial modeling and geocomputation. |
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Haukos engages in landscape level assessment of wildlife populations associated with agriculture systems. |
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Hutchinson is an ecological engineer with expertise in water resources management, stormwater control and flood mitigation and remediation of contaminated soil and water. She has experience working with crop production systems, animal waste management systems and grazing lands. |
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Jha's expertise is in digital agronomy uses advanced analytics, wireless sensor networks and machine learning to optimize soil, water and energy management in Kansas. He over sees the Digital Agronomoy Research Team that specializes in UAV remote sensing, geospatial analysis and precision irrigation. |
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Joshi's work focuses on integrating precision agriculture, agronomy and artificial intelligence (AI) in various agronomic decisions. |
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Kennelly's focus area is management of diseases of horticultural/specialty crops. |
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Lacasa holds degrees in agronomy and statistics. Her research lies at the intersection between statistics and agriculture where she works to improve the quantitative methods applied by agricultural researchers. |
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Lee works to make agriculture more sustainable—environmentally, economically, and socially—through technology and innovation. Lee's expertise in water and agricultural economics aligns with digital agriculture by using data-driven solutions to optimize water use and improve systems. |
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Lollato is an agronomist with K-State Research and Extension with research appointments, with a particular emphasis on wheat and forages. Digital agriculture and advanced analytics are integral for both sides of his appointment, since they relate directly with farmers' decisions and research output. |
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Mather's work focuses on sustainability and conservation, especially when working in aquatic ecology. |
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McGinty has worked with the USDA and in the drug discovery industry. Her research focuses on knowledge graphs and their applications to artificial intelligence approaches with projects integrating food informatics and ag informatics. |
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Patrignani specializes in applied soil physics, with an emphasis on multiscale soil moisture monitoring, spanning point, field, watershed, and mesoscale levels, and its applications in agriculture and hydrology. |
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Ratajczak works to understand how the decisions land stewards make, such as fire, grazing by cattle, or reintroducing bison affects biodiversity and the provision of ecosystem services to people. He also seeks to measure how these decisions affect the resilience to extreme droughts. |
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Daran Rudnick Research interest include: irrigation management, evapotranspiration, precision water management, fertigation and advancements in plant and soil water monitoring technologies. |
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Matthew Sanderson Sanderson specializes in social and human dimensions of agriculture. |
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Durga Prasad Sarilla Sarilla has 13+years of experience in Instrumentation and data analysis, emphasized on control automation, digitization strategies and advanced analytics, that can be applied cross-functionally. |
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Shamir's expertise is in data science, digital humanities, machine learning, astroinformatics, medical informatics and bioimage informatics. |
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Sheldon oversees the Sunderland Foundation Innovation Lab, providing spaces and resources for digital skills, prototyping, robotics, sensors, machine learning and data visualization. His work supports digital tools and emerging technologies that advance innovation in agriculture. |
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Snider is an instructor for interdisciplinary engineering senior design coursework. He's involved in corporate engagement with college of engineering industry partners who sponsor senior design projects. Snider has 27 years of satellite and space hardware experience working at Ball Aerospace. |
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Vasserman studies cybersecurity and privacy and their interplay with safety in cyber-physical systems, medical systems and IoT. More recent work includes trustworthy and robust machine learning for assured autonomy (such as safety-critical closed-loop control). |
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Xuan Xu Xu's research focuses on developing statistical and computational approaches to address complex real-world challenges in agriculture, biomedical sciences, and human health from an interdisciplinary perspective. He also serves as the Principal Investigator of the 1DATA Consortium. |
Helene Avocat
Marcellus Caldas
Walter Dodds
Michael Flynn
Jessica Gnad
David Haukos
Stacy Hutchinson
Gaurav Jha
Deepak Joshi
Megan Kennelly 
Josefina Lacasa 
Juhee Lee 
Romulo Lollato 
Martha Mather 
Hande McGinty
Andres Patrignani
Zak Ratajczak
Lior Shamir
Jeff Sheldon
Paul Snider
Eugene Vasserman