Gaurav Jha
Assistant Professor, Precision Agriculture
Gaurav Jha is an assistant professor specializing in precision agriculture in the department of agronomy. His research focuses on sensor-based monitoring, precision irrigation, and machine learning applications, all essential to advancing digital agriculture.
What does being an ID3A affiliate mean to you?
It means being part of a community that is not afraid to think big or work across boundaries. ID3A gives my team the space to connect agriculture, and data to its people in meaningful ways. Every time I meet an ID3A directors or affiliates, I feel we are brainstorming new ideas to advance digital era of agriculture. As a precision agriculture researcher, I constantly collaborate with social scientists, AI experts, and economists. Being an ID3A affiliate makes those connections natural, and so much easier.
What skills, ideas, or opportunities do you bring to ID3A?
I bring a mix of field-based research, digital tools, and my interdisciplinary (fun) team of students and scholars. My work sits at the intersection of agronomy, remote sensing, and data science, with a focus on solving farm or crop production problems like water use, nutrient management, stress detection in crops. We use drones, ground sensors, satellites, and machine learning models but always with the goal of making the data useful to farmers.
What I hope to contribute to the ID3A network is that bridge between tech and practice. My lab is constantly testing tools in the field, working with growers, we partner with industry, and adapt our approach based on what we learn outside the lab.
Why do you value working in an interdisciplinary model across focus areas and colleges?
It is at the core of everything I do. The kinds of problems I work on like precision water management, or technology adoption, such areas of researc do not fit neatly into one discipline. You need agronomy, computer science, sociology, engineering, and economics all in the same room to even begin to solve them. My program is built on that idea. We use sensors and models, but we also talk to farmers, test ideas in the field, and work with people who understand systems from different angles. Interdisciplinary work is the only way the solutions we develop will work in reality.
What excites you most about being an ID3A affiliate? What are you most looking forward to?
The best ideas happen when disciplines collide. I am excited to work with people who think in different ways from AI to soil science and turn those ideas into tools that actually help in the field. I am looking forward to projects that leave the lab and make a difference on our farms.