Ph.D. student’s interests in agriculture and technology lead to three-year fellowship

Shiang-Wan Chin, a systems doctoral candidate at Cornell University, has been selected as a Rockey Foundation for Food and Agriculture Research (FFAR) Fellow for 2021-24.

“Throughout my life I've found three reoccurring themes: entrepreneurship, food security, and adventure-seeking,” said Chin, who is sponsored by Microsoft and works closely with Dr. Ranveer Chandra, Managing Director for Microsoft Research for Industry. “During my undergraduate education at the University of California, Davis built my first startup, ‘Brit’s Bites’, where I produced protein bars to solve my own problem of not having time and money.”

Chin’s research interests lie at the intersection of agriculture and technology and seeking to understand research as it connects to policy and social systems, and to startup ventures that bring research to fruition. With these goals in mind, he started "farmVal" from a 48-hour hackathon along with five others with the vision of bringing soil lab testing out of the lab and online.

“From my background in agriculture economics at UC Davis, business at Deloitte, and engineering at Cornell, I seek to combat food insecurity through research and action on Cornell’s campus and hopefully around the world,” said Chin. “Working with the Microsoft FarmBeats platform and new networking technologies my system is designed in a modular manner to permit differing use cases and optimization goals for the benefits of various stakeholders.”

After graduating from UC Davis, Chin joined Deloitte in the Silicon Valley, working with blockchain clients at the height of the initial coin offering bubble in 2017. Seeking a deeper level of understanding of the technology, he left Deloitte to enroll in Cornell’s systems engineering M.Eng. program. After earning his M.Eng., he decided to pursue a Ph.D. in systems with a focus on computer and data science.

The Rockey FFAR Fellows Program was established to provide professional development and career guidance to the next generation of food and agriculture scientists across the Foundation for Food and Agriculture’s challenge areas and strategic initiatives. The consensus among employers is that U.S. universities could better prepare a career-ready STEM workforce by breaking down the disciplinary silos and increasing the focus on professional development and “soft-skills”, which would result in more well-rounded graduates. By providing early career support to graduate students, the program cultivates supportive relationships between graduate students and industry, government and NGO peers to equip students with the skills needed to facilitate their transition to the workforce and prepare future leaders for food and agriculture.

The Rockey FFAR Fellows Program is led by the academic programs office at the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences at North Carolina State University.

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