Srishti Gaur, a post-doctoral scholar in the Department of Food, Agricultural and Biological Engineering (FABE), placed third in the 2023 CFAES Research Forum and Poster Competition last month for her project, contributing to a National Science Foundation (NSF) Cyber-Physical Systems Frontier Award called COALESCE: ‘COntext-Aware LEarning for Sustainable CybEr-agricultural systems'.
The CFAES Research Forum Poster Competition is an annual event organized as a part of the Celebration of Research Week across the Columbus and Wooster CFAES campuses. The event is organized to honor and appreciate the broad range of research conducted at different academic levels in the college, including undergraduate students, graduate students, postdoctoral scholars, and research scientists. Students and professionals affiliated with CFAES departments can participate in the poster competition. Multiple judges evaluate each poster as part of a competition to highlight some of the most impressive research currently being conducted in the college.
The project contributed to research into the use of machine learning (ML) to simulate the process of stomatal conductance and has important implications for how researchers simulate vegetation response to weather and climate variability. This work will continue through the integration of ML models such as this into biophysical simulation frameworks such as the MLCan model.
"My journey in this project has been incredible so far. Having a Ph.D. in physical hydrology, it is really exciting for me to work in emerging fields like ecohydrology and hybrid physics-data modeling," said Srishti. "We are working on integrating machine learning and bio-physical model frameworks to leverage the knowledge built into process-based formulations with the flexibility and robustness of data-driven approaches."
Srishti worked with FABE Assistant Professor Dr. Darren Drewry on the project.
"It is very rewarding as an advisor to see a diligent and committed postdoctoral researcher such as Srishti rewarded in this way in the CFAES Research Forum competition," said Dr. Drewry.
Dr. Drewry and Srishti are participating in field experiments conducted in Ames Iowa this summer to test these ML models and focus them on soybean genotypes.
Congratulations to Dr. Drewry and Srishti for this exciting accomplishment!