Jack Mason, an undergraduate student in the College of Agricultural, Consumer and Environmental Sciences, won a hackathon competition at Plant Biology 2024, a yearly conference held by the American Society of Plant Biologists.

Mason is pursuing a bachelor’s degree in Computer Science + Crop Sciences — a program jointly hosted by ACES and The Grainger College of Engineering. He works in the research group of Andrew Leaky, director of the Center for Advanced Bioenergy and Bioproducts Innovation at Illinois.

Within CABBI and AIFARMS, Mason is applying convolutional neural networks — a form of machine learning — to do image analysis that allows the in-field performance of emerging bioenergy crops to be quickly evaluated by uncrewed aerial vehicles such as drones.

A hackathon is a short, competitive event where people work in teams to solve computational or data-based problems. In this case, the ASPB-ARN (African Researchers Network) challenged teams to design a computational framework that uses modern tools like artificial intelligence and data analytics to fast-track a breeding pipeline for enhanced flavor in a fruit or vegetable of their choosing.

Read more from CABBI.