Title: Agricultural Informatics: Design, Modeling, and Software Engineering
Ankita Raturi is an assistant professor at Purdue University, where she runs the Agricultural Informatics Lab, focused on human-centered design, information modeling, and software engineering, for increased resilience in food and agricultural systems. Ankita’s current work includes: the development of modular, open source, decision support tools (e.g., for cover cropping); information modeling and development of domain-relevant data services (e.g., for plant data); design methods for agricultural technologies (e.g., for soil health management technologies); and information management and design for diversified farming systems (e.g., for community food resilience).
From axe to drone, humans have striven to augment their physical and mental faculties through technology, particularly in the pursuit of food, and eventually agriculture. The design of technology is not new, but our approach, our guiding philosophies, values, principles, requirements, and constraints, have all evolved. Agricultural systems are coupled human and natural systems that are core to both the survival and the success of our species. With this comes a growing need for ways to analyze, manage, and sustainably improve, agricultural systems. Software enables us to abstractly represent complex systems in order to then efficiently and effectively access information about such systems. To ensure the development of usable and useful tools, we must create and apply novel design methods; design improved mechanisms for data flow, information modeling, and interoperability; and ground digital tools in both a critical understanding of agricultural stakeholder needs, as well as robust agricultural research and engineering. At the Agricultural Informatics Lab we engage in a range of interdisciplinary and cross-sector research partnerships to engineer better software for agricultural decision making and increased resilience in our food systems. In this talk, I will share my vision and current research in Agriculture Informatics.
