Biography

Before moving to KSU, I was working as an Assistant Research Professor in Precision Agriculture at Montana State University to develop and establish research, teaching and extension as an initiative of College of Agriculture. My research and extension focus were on decision support systems for input management for agricultural productions in Montana. I also taught precision agriculture courses that emphasized on agricultural sensors, robotics and variable rate systems.

I was a postdoctoral research scholar in the Department of Land, Air and Water Resources at University of California in Davis. My research focus at UC Davis was on and wireless sensor networks in specialty crops (vegetables and orchard crops) of the Central Valley of California. This venture aims to evaluate ten different irrigation decision support tools by simulating more widespread use of smart irrigation practices based on aerial reflectance, crop canopy and soil moisture sensors for prediction modeling for input management.

I am continuing to work with UC Davis on projects as a collaborative investigator in USDA Conservation Innovation Grant (CIG) funded in 2021 until 2026 for underserved Punjabi-American growers in Central Valley to establish climate-smart irrigation for drought, soil fertility, & structural resilience in almond systems using deep root irrigation (DRI), and hybrid perennial grass cover crops.

I briefly worked in industry as an Agronomist at Glorieta Geosciences in Santa Fe, New Mexico (NM). I was involved in federal and state regulated dairy and environmental monitoring projects. The broader objectives of my research duties included environmental, regulatory and compliances issues in integrated dairy farms of Eastern, Central and Southern NM counties. Additionally, I have also served as a water quality expert on a water rights project related to increased salinity of groundwater at Gila Valley Irrigation District in Arizona for San Carlos Apache Tribe.

Education

Ph.D. in Plant and Environmental Sciences (Major: Soil Science) at New Mexico State University. I worked on a participatory research in the indigenous community of Navajo Nation growers, stakeholders, and policy makers. My research was based on long-term monitoring of elements and contaminants of concerns after the Gold King Mine Spill. I used proximal sensing (particularly in-situ fluorescence spectrometry and geostatistical tools) to monitor and map the contaminants on spatial and temporal scale to identify the regions of exceedances across the Animas watershed in the Southwestern United States.

M.S. from the Department of Soil Science, Punjab Agricultural University (India). My research focus was to evaluate the impact of salinity on agricultural crops of the semi-arid systems and identify precision irrigation benefits on crop biophysical parameters and soil properties using brackish water.

Research

My research programs at KSU will focus on maximizing agricultural production in an integrated agroecosystem of Kansas by minimizing the environmental footprint at different spatiotemporal scales. I look forward to collaborative opportunities with growers across the state to conduct on-farm research trials and aim for increased adoption of proximal, remote and precision sensing technologies as decision support for Kansas’s soil-water-energy nexus.

I will continue partnering with economists, social scientists, ag.engineers and computer scientists to integrate socioeconomic models, artificial intelligence and machine learning models to establish a holistic and globally renowned precision agriculture program at K-State.