2026 Annual Meeting Event

AGENDA

Sunday, May 17

6:00 p.m. Dinner at Carmines

Monday, May 18

8:00 a.m. Continental Breakfast & Check-in

9:00 a.m. Welcome to AI-LEAF Institute 
Angela Walsh and Candace Hulbert

9:15 a.m. Director’s Overview
Shashi Shekhar, University of Minnesota
David Mulla, University of Minnesota
Center for Applied Research and Educational Improvement (CARE) External Evaluator

Research Theme and Vignette Overviews & Highlights

• 10:15 a.m. Knowledge-Guided Machine Learning (Theme 1, Vignette 1)
  Vipin Kumar, Yao Zhang, Shrideep Pallickara, Tim Griffi s, Stephen Ogle, Licheng Liu, Dominic Woolf, Yiqi Luo, Francesca Cotrufo, Sangmi Pallickara, Shashi Shekhar, Shrideep Pallickara
• 10:50 a.m. Digital Soil Twins (Theme 5, Vignette 5)
  Shrideep Pallickara, David Mulla, Sangmi Pallickara

11:00 a.m. Break

• 11:15 a.m. Forest Sustainability and Agricultural Resilience (Vignette 2, Themes 3 and 1)
  Nathan Mueller, Raju Vatsavai, Theresa Chen, Chad Babcock, Vipin Kumar, Bharath Hariharan, Dongyang Wei, Yao-Yi Chiang
• 11:35 a.m. AI-Aided Multi-Objective Decision Making (Theme 4, Vignette 4)
  Justin Johnson, Carla Gomes, Mingyi Hong

12:00 p.m. Lunch

• 1:00 p.m. CLeAR (Theme 2, Vignette 1)
  Carla Gomes, Johannes Lehmann, Yiqi Luo, Hoadi Xu
• 1:25 p.m. Computer Vision & Analysis (Theme 3, Vignette 1)
  David Mulla, Nikos Papanikolopolous, Bharath Hariharan, Abe Davis, Noah Snavely

1:45 p.m. Education & Workforce Development

• K-12 EWD - Natalie McCaff ery, Candace Hulbert, Allison Chatrchyan, Andie Conlon,
• Undergraduate EWD- Natalie Hunt, Candace Hulbert, Luke Gregory
• Graduate EWD- David Mulla, Nikos Papanikolopolous, Angela Walsh, Candace Hulbert
• Professional EWD- Bruce Erickson, Allison Chatrchyan, Candace Hulbert, Rose Ogutu, Gulnihal Ozbay
• Farmer Education and Outreach- Rose Ogutu, Allison Chatrchyan, Candace Hulbert

2:30 p.m. Broadening Participation
Maria Gini, Gulnihal Ozbay, Rose Ogutu, Fatima Boukari

2:45 p.m. Collaboration Nexus
David Mulla, Jim Wilgenbush, Allison Chatrchyan, Candace Hulbert

3:00 p.m. Break

3:10 p.m. Student/Postdoc Lightning Presentations
Led by David Mulla

• Sam Leuthold
• Haodi Xu
• Theresa Chen - Digital Soil Mapping with Multimodal Machine Learning
• Fenghui Yuan - Multiscale Carbon Flux Modeling Integrating Process-Based And Atmospheric Inversion Approaches
• Yufeng Yang
• Praveen Ravirathinam - A Knowledge Guided Pretraining Approach for Multimodal Foundation Models: Applications in Remote Sensing
• Ebasa Temesgen - Unmanned Aerial Vehicle Deer Detection and Deterrence For Small Farms
  Fiona Adenyo
• Alyssa Bennett, Brennan Curry, Sophie Lundberg, Isabella Sullivan- AI-LEAF Undergraduate Scholars

4:00 p.m. Student/Postdoc Poster Session (see list above)

4:45 p.m. Adjourn

6:00 p.m. Dinner at YardBird

Tuesday, May 19

8:00 a.m. Continental Breakfast

9:00 a.m. Welcome and Housekeeping
Angela Walsh

9:05-9:15 a.m. Introductory Remarks
Deputy Director Venu (Kal) Kalavacharla

9:15 a.m. 

• AI-LEAF Overview High-level Impacts and Outcomes
• Concurrent with External Advisory Board Meeting

9:45a.m. Illustrative Accomplishments

• Digital Soil Twin with short demo - Sam Leuthold)
• Knowledge Guided Foundation Model for Ag. - Vipin Kumar
• Above-Ground Forest Biomass - Theresa Chen
• Drone detection and deterrence for deer in vegetable farms - Maria Gini
• Agronomy e-Learning Academy - Bruce Erickson
• AI for Ag. conference, AAAI Workshop Nexus - Shashi Shekhar, David Mulla

10:15 a.m. Student Poster Session

• Sam Leuthold
• Haodi Xu
• Theresa Chen - Aboveground Biomass Prediction with Deep Learning Yufeng Yang
• Praveen Ravirathinam - A Knowledge Guided Pretraining Approach for Multimodal Foundation Models: Applications in Remote Sensing
• Ebasa Temesgen- Unmanned Aerial Vehicle Deer Detection and Deterrence for Small Farms

11:00 p.m. USDA Panel: Forthcoming AI in Ag Challenges and Opportunities

12:15 p.m. Lunch

1:30 p.m. AI in Ag Challenges and Opportunities: Stakeholders Panel

2:30 p.m. Break

2:45 p.m. Team Science: Identify Directions for Years 4, 5, and Beyond
Prof. Johannes Lehmann and Candace Hulbert

The AI-LEAF team will synthesize key messages from earlier panels. They will engage in formulating big questions for far-reaching impacts- national or global in scale that address an unknown, thinking big picture, and transformative. … How can we think more integratively? Building relationships between the project and its components, answering a bigger question …

4:00 p.m. Adjourn