Animal and dairy sciences assistant professor Joao Dorea and biological systems engineering assistant professor Zhou Zhang were recently selected to receive Alfred Toepfer Faculty Fellow Awards. The one-year award is bestowed on pre-tenure faculty whose research benefits agricultural activities within the United States and whose areas of interest lie in the scientific fields of crop research, improvements in crop yield and quality, or animal sciences.

Dorea joined the CALS faculty in July 2019 as an assistant professor in the Department of Animal and Dairy Sciences. His research and teaching focus on dairy-related applications of precision agriculture. With expertise in sensor technologies and data analytics, Dorea’s lab specializes in the use of automated computer vision systems and other AI tools to monitor the behavior and growth of dairy cattle, with the goal of seeing how the various patterns observed correlate with health status, welfare, milk yields and other important traits.

Zhang joined CALS in March 2019 as an assistant professor in the Department of Biological Systems Engineering. Her research focuses on using artificial intelligence techniques for sustainable agriculture, including developing new remote sensing techniques to permit data acquisition from multi-sensors across multi-platforms and utilizing data science techniques to analyze the big data generated through these approaches. The long-term goal is to help producers with decision-making tools, such as crop mapping, automated phenotyping and yield prediction.