Abstract: Data-driven techniques help boost agricultural productivity by increasing yields, reducing losses and cutting down input costs. However, these techniques have seen sparse adoption owing to high costs of manual data collection and limited connectivity solutions. In this talk we will describe our innovations that leverage the Internet of Things and Artificial Intelligence to help make affordable digital agriculture solutions. We will also present our product, Azure FarmBeats, which is in preview, and can be used by partners to build their digital agriculture solutions.
Bio: Ranveer Chandra is the CTO of Agri-Food and also leads the Networking Research Group at Microsoft Research, and a new Microsoft initiative called Research for Industry. Ranveer’s research has shipped in multiple Microsoft products, including XBOX, Azure, Windows, and Visual Studio. He started the FarmBeats project in 2015, which shipped as a Microsoft product in 2019. He also led research on battery tech, and TV white spaces. Bill Gates featured his work on FarmBeats on GatesNotes, and he has been invited to present to the Secretary of Agriculture, and on TV White Spaces to the FCC Chairman. Ranveer has published over 90 research papers and has over 100 patents granted by the USPTO. He is an IEEE Fellow, and has won several awards, including best paper awards in computer science conferences and the MIT Technology Review’s Top Innovators Under 35 award in 2010. Ranveer has an undergraduate degree from IIT Kharagpur, India, and a Ph.D. in Computer Science from Cornell University.
