2023 HiPC Workshop on US-India Research Initiatives and Opportunities in Digital Agriculture

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, University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, USA. “AIFARMS: Artificial Intelligence for Future Agricultural Resilience,  Management, and Sustainability.”

Soumik Sarkar, AIIRA, Iowa State University, USA

DK Panda, ICICLE, The Ohio State University, USA

Raju Vatsavai, AI-CLIMATE, North Carolina State University, USA. “Recent Advances in AI for Forest Monitoring Using Global Earth Observations.”

Ananth Kalyanaraman, AgAID, Washington State University, USA. “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: TBD)

Speakers:

Sunita Choudhary, ICRISAT “AI for crop trait inference from sensor-data to support development of climate resilient and nutrient-enhanced crops”

Raghu Murtugudde, Indian Institute of Technology Bombay, India. “Agricultural advisories using AI/ML for downscaling weather and climate forecasts” (tentative/to be confirmed)

Rajbabu Velmurugan, Indian Institute of Technology Bombay, India. “AI/ML research for agriculture at TIH IIT-B” (tentative title)

Alkesh Wadhwani, Gates Foundation, India. “Title to come: AI in non-profit Ag sector”

Murali Krishna Gumma, ICRISAT, “Crop monitoring using Earth Observation Data and Machine learning algorithms”  

 

Session 3: Industry Session (12:00 – 1:00 pm)            

(session chair: Shivakumar Sastry)

Speakers:

Nikita Saxena, Google Research, India

Praveen Pankajakshan, CropIn, India

Siddharth Tata, Amazon Fresh & Kissan, Amazon India

 

Lunch (1:00 – 2:00 pm)

                       

Session 4: Small group discussion (2:00 – 3:45 pm)

(session moderator: Soumik Sarkar)

Small group facilitators: Ananth Kalyanaraman, Soumik Sarkar, Vikram Adve

Interactive session in break-out group format. All attendees invited to participate.

           

Coffee Break (3:45 – 4:15 pm)

 

Session 5: Panel: US-India opportunities (4:15 – 6:00 pm)

Varied challenges that come up in the Indian ag sector, including data, access sharing, and discussion of tools from US that could be deployed/tested in India, cross-country training/exchange/workforce development.)

• Near-term opportunities for collaboration and innovation in Indian Agriculture

(panel moderator: Ananth Kalyanaraman)  

Panelists:

Suhel Bidani, Gates Foundation, India

Adarsh Krishnamurthy, AIIRA, Iowa State University, USA

Girish Chowdhary, AIFARMS

Murali Krishna Gumma, ICRISAT

Kalaivani Ganesan, Department of Biotechnology, India (tentative/to be confirmed)

 

Closing remarks and adjourn (6:00 pm)

 

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