Micheal Clements, NAFB News Service

Purdue University will be a partner in a new National Science Foundation Engineering Research Center created to develop advanced agricultural technologies. The new technologies will address food, energy and water security challenges. With a five-year, $26 million grant, the National Science Foundation has established the Engineering Research Center for the Internet of Things for Precision Agriculture. The new center, headquartered at the University of Pennsylvania’s School of Engineering and Applied Science, will combine the talents of more than two dozen researchers with Penn Engineering, Purdue University, the University of California, Merced, and the University of Florida. Mark Lundstrom, acting dean of Purdue University’s College of Engineering, says, “Our involvement will also represent a new chapter in a long history of collaboration between the colleges of Engineering and Agriculture.” Starting in the soil and reaching into the digital cloud, technologies developed through the center will collect, share and analyze data to improve farming practices, maximizing a farm’s productivity while minimizing its waste and ecological impact.