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Thought For Food

The Cornell Institute for Digital Agriculture (CIDA) community is a dynamic ecosystem of scholars, teachers, and practitioners. Through seed grants, collaborations, education, and outreach, our members seek to drive agriculture innovation and tackle social, economic, policy,  and environmental challenges at scale.

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2025 DA Workshop

Join CIDA for our annual in-person event showcasing our Research Innovation Fund (RIF) awards, CIDA and DA community updates, and a keynote address at 11am by Aidan Connolly, President, Agritech Capital. Lunch and refreshments provided. Advance registration required.

Agriculture Robotics

Photo Credit: Allison Usevage

Farming brought into the future

New Knowledge, New Practices

Sustainably feeding people, improving livelihoods, and protecting the environment are among the most significant challenges of our time. CIDA’s mission is to create a dynamic community of researchers, farmers, industry partners, and other stakeholders working to advance more sustainable agriculture and food systems through a cross-disciplinary approach that integrates fundamental discoveries across the life sciences, engineering, computing, and social sciences.

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Continuous discovery, Innovation, and Dialogue

The combined passions and talents of Cornell’s world-renowned researchers manifest in transformational knowledge and technologies that help farmers increase their productivity and profitability while also protecting the environment. Watch this video to learn more.

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What we are working on

Projects

Learn more about the projects we fund through Research Innovation Fund Seed Grants

CONTROLLED ENVIRONMENT AGRICULTURE

Advancing Autonomous Greenhouse Technology with AI for Sustainable Food and Plant Production in Controlled Environment Agriculture

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COMPUTATIONAL MODELING

Quantifying 3D vegetative growth and light environment for orchard trees with terrestrial lidar and computational modeling

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FOOD SAFETY

Optimized pathogen environmental monitoring program in food processing facilities through reinforcement learning and privatized federated learning algorithms

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RESEARCH IN ACTION

Thought Leadership

Yu Jiang Video

01_Yu Jiang

Yu Jiang
Executive Committee member, CIDA, and Assistant Professor, College of Agriculture and Life Sciences

Julio Giordano Video

02_Julio Giordano

Julio Giordano
Associate Director, CIDA and Associate Professor, College of Agriculture and Life Sciences

Katie Gold Video

03_Katie Gold

Katie Gold
Executive Committee member, CIDA, and Assistant Professor, College of Agriculture and Life Sciences

Ed Mabaya Video

04_Ed Mabaya

Ed Mabaya
Executive Committee member, CIDA, and Research Professor, College of Agriculture and Life Sciences

Hakim Weatherspoon Video

05_Hakim Weatherspoon

Hakim Weatherspoon
Associate Director, CIDA and Professor, Bowers College of Computing and Information Science

Renata Ivanek Video

06_Renata Ivanek

Renata Ivanek
Associate Director, CIDA, and Professor, College of Veterinary Medicine

Jonathan Jaramillo Video

07_Jonathan Jaramillo

Jonathan Jaramillo
PhD Student, College of Engineering

Steven Wolf Video

08_Steven Wolf

Steven Wolf
Executive Committee member, CIDA, and Associate Professor, College of Agriculture and Life Sciences

Continuous discovery, Innovation, and Dialogue

Yu Jiang

Julio Giordano

KATIE GOLD

ED MABAYA

HAKIM WEATHERSPOON

RENATA IVANEK

JONATHAN JARAMILO

STEVEN WOLF