NRT-INFEWS: The DataFEWSion Traineeship Program for Innovations at the Nexus of Food Production, Renewable Energy, and Water Quality
- Conference
- Location
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Virtual On line
- Publication Date
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June 22, 2020
- Start Date
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June 22, 2020
- End Date
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June 26, 2021
- Conference Session
- Tagged Topics
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Diversity and NSF Grantees Poster Session
- Page Count
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5
- DOI
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10.18260/1-2--35002
- Permanent URL
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https://peer.asee.org/35002
- Download Count
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298
Paper Authors
Sarah M. Ryan
Iowa State University
orcid.org/0000-0001-5903-1432
Sarah M. Ryan is the Joseph Walkup Professor in the Department of Industrial and Manufacturing Systems at Iowa State University. During academic year 2006-07 she served as Interim Chair of the department, and was Director of Graduate Education for the Industrial Engineering program from 2008 to 2014. She teaches graduate courses in network optimization, stochastic models, and stochastic optimization as well as an undergraduate courses in engineering economic analysis and stochastic, modeling, analysis and simulation. Professor Ryan’s research interests lie in the planning and operation of energy, manufacturing and service systems under uncertainty. Her work has been funded by several single and multi-investigator National Science Foundation grants, including a Faculty Early Career Development (CAREER) award, as well as by industry, private foundations, and the U.S. Department of Energy through its ARPA-E initiative. She is PI of a National Research Traineeship on Innovations at the Nexus of Food, Energy and Water Systems. Dr. Ryan is a Fellow of the Institute of Industrial and Systems Engineers and serves as Editor-in-Chief of The Engineering Economist.
Michelle L. Soupir Iowa State University
Dr. Soupir's research focuses on soil and water quality, nonpoint source pollution control, watershed management, and water quality monitoring. She uses both lab and field scale studies to examine the occurrence, fate and transport of pathogens, pathogen indicators and contaminants of emerging environmental concern (CoEECs) such as antibiotics and antibiotic-resistant bacteria to surface and groundwater systems. Findings from these studies have implications to improve the Total Maximum Daily Load (TMDL) development and implementation process, identify the impact of landuse practices on water quality, and develop management practices to reduce pollutant transport.
Amy Kaleita Iowa State University
Amy L. Kaleita is Professor of Agricultural and Biosystems Engineering at Iowa State University, and a licensed professional engineer. She has a B.S. in Agricultural Engineering from Penn State University, an M.S. in Civil and Environmental Engineering from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, from which she also has a PhD in Agricultural Engineering. Her disciplinary research is in the area of data mining and information technologies for precision soil and water conservation.
Sergio Horacio Lence Iowa State University
Robert Brown Iowa State University
Dr. Brown is Anson Marston Distinguished Professor in Engineering and Gary and Donna Hoover Chair in Mechanical Engineering at Iowa State University (ISU). Dr. Brown is the founding director of the Bioeconomy Institute (BEI), which coordinates ISU’s research, educational, and outreach activities related to biobased products and bioenergy. His research interests focus on the thermochemical processing of biomass into energy, fuels and chemicals. He has written widely on bioenergy, including the textbook Biorenewable Resources: Engineering New Products from Agriculture. His book Why Are We Producing Biofuels for general readership received the Book of the Year Award from Biofuels Digest in 2012.
Abstract
Sustainable provision of food, energy and clean water requires understanding of the interdependencies among systems as well as the motivations and incentives of farmers and rural policy makers. Agriculture lies at the heart of interactions among food, energy and water systems. It is an increasingly energy intensive enterprise, but is also a growing source of energy. Agriculture places large demands on water supplies while poor practices can degrade water quality. Each of these interactions creates opportunities for modeling driven by sensor-based and qualitative data collection to improve the effectiveness of system operation and control in the short term as well as investments and planning for the long term. The large volume and complexity of the data collected creates challenges for decision support and stakeholder communication. The DataFEWSion National Research Traineeship program aims to build a community of researchers that explores, develops and implements effective data-driven decision-making to efficiently produce food, transform primary energy sources into energy carriers, and enhance water quality. The initial cohort includes PhD students in agricultural & biosystems, chemical, and industrial engineering as well as statistics and crop production & physiology.
The project aims to prepare trainees for multiple career paths such as research scientist, bioeconomy entrepreneur, agribusiness leader, policy maker, agriculture analytics specialist, and professor. The traineeship has four key components. First, trainees will complete a new graduate certificate to build competencies in fundamental understanding of interactions among food production, water quality and bioenergy; data acquisition, visualization, and analytics; complex systems modeling for decision support; and the economics, policy and sociology of the FEW nexus. Second, they will conduct interdisciplinary research on (a) technologies and practices to increase agriculture’s contributions to energy supply while reducing its negative impacts on water quality and human health; (b) data science to increase crop productivity within the constraints of sustainable intensification; or (c) decision sciences to manage tradeoffs and promote best practices among diverse stakeholders. Third, they will participate in a new graduate learning community to consist of a two-year series of workshops that focus in alternate years on the context of the Midwest agricultural FEW nexus and professional development; and fourth, they will have small-group experiences to promote collaboration and peer review. Each trainee will create and curate a portfolio that combines artifacts from coursework and research with reflections on the broader impacts of their work. Trainee recruitment emphasizes women and underrepresented groups.
Ryan, S. M., & Soupir, M. L., & Kaleita, A., & Lence, S. H., & Brown, R. (2020, June), NRT-INFEWS: The DataFEWSion Traineeship Program for Innovations at the Nexus of Food Production, Renewable Energy, and Water Quality Paper presented at 2020 ASEE Virtual Annual Conference Content Access, Virtual On line . 10.18260/1-2--35002
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