Six faculty from the College of Agricultural, Consumer and Environmental Sciences (ACES) have received funding to further their international work through the longstanding ACES International Seed Grant program.

The goal of the seed grant program is to support awardees in establishing strong international relationships that will continue to expand and flourish into a larger and substantial international collaborative effort that will ultimately benefit departments, programs, the College of ACES, and the University of Illinois. 

Past recipients report significant impacts from this funding, which is administered by the ACES Office of International Programs and funded through the Arlys Conrad Endowment Fund.

Congratulations to these ACES faculty for their funded projects:

Diane Plewa, Crop Sciences, “Plant Disease Identification and Outreach: Shared Experiences between the National University of Colombia Medellín and the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign”

Gopu Raveendran Nair and Jorge Guzman, Agricultural and Biological Engineering, “Valorization of Pineapple Leaf Fiber for Adsorption of Phosphorous from Soil: a collaborative effort with Costa Rica”

Hope Michelson, Agricultural and Consumer Economics, “Digital Solutions for Climate Adaptation in Smallholder Rubber Farming” (Indonesia)

Mohammed Kamruzzaman, Agricultural and Biological Engineering, “Deep Learning Based Hyperspectral Imaging for Hatching Eggs Gender Detection” (Japan)

Sarah Janzen, Agricultural and Consumer Economics, “Innovative financial tools for increased agricultural investment by smallholder farmers in Kenya”

Isabella Condotta, Animal Sciences, “I-PICS: Illinois Pig Identification through Computer Vision System” (Brazil)