AccelNet: Accelerate Integration of Engineering and Agricultural Research using Artificial Intelligence (AI2EAR)

Food production is a complex global enterprise. Scientific gaps, technical gaps, and social barriers hinder the ability to meet global food security needs. This catalytic-level AccelNet project (Accelerate Integration of Engineering and Agricultural Research using Artificial Intelligence – AI2EAR) will promote strategies to improve yield, reduce crop loss, decrease crop resource demands, and increase food nutrition. AI2EAR will create links across international collaborative efforts focused on sensor science, multiscale modeling, and data analytics, particularly through artificial intelligence. The emerging network of networks will enable researchers to better address challenges associated with environmental, ecological, and biological variabilities seen and expected in agriculture. AI2EAR provides a means participant networks to use principles of responsible research and innovation and continual stakeholder engagement to change, shape, and influence the path of innovation expected in 21st century agriculture.

AI2EAR will address key challenges to food security: 1) the inability to sense, quantify, and predict physical and chemical variables in the environment, including the microbiome; 2) the lack of data analytics and models that transform concurrent multi-scale datasets into decision-making strategies; and 3) the lack of open-source cyber-infrastructures for accessing, analyzing, and sharing the insights extracted from biological, agricultural, and environmental datasets. Collaborative learning, on-farm technology training, cooperative extension, and international exchange opportunities for students and postdoctoral scholars will prepare future transdisciplinary leads in this field. AI2EAR will develop and disseminate products and practices to integrate and transfer knowledge. Interactions developed as part of the network of networks, including from AI2EAR workshops and survey participation, will accelerate sharing and adoption of technologies urgently needed to facilitate innovation for next-generation precision-ag solutions.

The Accelerating Research through International Network-to-Network Collaborations (AccelNet) program is designed to accelerate the process of scientific discovery and prepare the next generation of U.S. researchers for multiteam international collaborations. The AccelNet program supports strategic linkages among U.S. research networks and complementary networks abroad that will leverage research and educational resources to tackle grand scientific challenges that require significant coordinated international efforts.

Co-funding for this award is provided by the Physiological Mechanisms and Biomechanics Program and the Plant Genome Research Program in the Directorate for Biological Sciences.

This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.