Richard Cooke, professor in ABE, was selected as the Fall 2020 Eminent Engineer by the Illinois Alpha Chapter of Tau Beta Pi, for his dedication and outstanding contributions in conservation engineering and drainage design. Professor Cooke has established an exemplary record in extension, research, and teaching at UIUC. He is a world-renowned, highly regarded expert in drainage engineering. His work focuses on increasing the efficiency of drainage-related best management practices and developing protocols for their design.

The Illinois Autonomous Farm (IAF) unites researchers, industry leaders, educators, and stakeholders to drive research, education, and outreach for autonomous systems in agriculture across Illinois. Launched in 2020 as a joint effort between the Department of Agricultural and Biological Engineering (ABE) and the Illinois Center for Digital Agriculture (CDA), the IAF is a shared testbed facility to advance artificial intelligence (AI) research for agriculture in four key areas:

Three agricultural and biological engineering (ABE) faculty members recently received named appointments from The Grainger College of Engineering. These prestigious appointments were granted to Dr. Girish Chowdhary as Donald Biggar Willet Faculty Fellow and Drs. Vijay Singh and Yuanhui Zhang as Founder Professor in Agricultural and Biological Engineering. Their selection for these appointments were based upon the recommendation of the Grainger Engineering College Advisory Committee on Appointments and have the approvals of Dean Rashid Bashir and Provost Andreas Cangellaris.

Each year, the College of ACES recognizes a select group of faculty, staff, and students who demonstrated outstanding achievements and exceptional service to the college. This year, Jamison Watson, Paul Davidson, Richard Cooke, and the IBRL team (Jedi Brown, Beth Conerty, Brian Jacobson, James Johnson, Phillip Manning, Ronda Sullivan, Vijay Singh and Eric Wolfe) belong to this distinguished group.

URBANA, Ill. ­– The Appropriate Scale Mechanization Consortium (ASMC) at the University of Illinois received a $2.25 million grant from the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) to continue work on empowering smallholder farmers in West Africa and Asia through sustainable mechanization solutions.

URBANA, Ill. ­­– Richard Cooke, professor of agricultural and biological engineering at the University of Illinois, has received a Fulbright U.S. Scholar Program award for the 2020-2021 academic year from the U.S. Department of State and the Fulbright Foreign Scholarship Board.

URBANA, Ill. – Even without the added stress of the COVID-19 pandemic, agricultural producers experience high levels of anxiety, depression, substance use, and death by suicide. Researchers at the University of Illinois and Illinois Extension are working to ensure producers and their families have the resources and access to services to manage their stress and mental health.

This year’s AWWA Woodard & Curran Scholarship recipient, Ann Brunton, grew up knowing that water is a big deal. She says, “I’ve always known we need to conserve water,” recalling the local water company giving a shower timer given to her and classmates in grade school and her family placing a rain bin outside to collect stormwater for their plants.

While 3D television never really caught on, 3D printing has earned itself a permanent spot in agriculture for creating tools, making replacement machine parts and crafting models for large projects such as grain facilities or 3D models of terrain for erosion control.

Saves time, money

URBANA, Ill. — While robots in agriculture haven’t entirely lost their cool factor, they certainly aren’t the novelty they were even five to 10 years ago.

“They still have their appeal, but we wouldn’t care less if they didn’t solve a problem,” said Drew Schumacher, president of Rogo Ag, a company that deploys their autonomous robots to accurately take soil samples, allowing Midwest farmers to make better soil nutrient decisions.