Center for Controlled Environment Agriculture
Dr. Liping Wang
Director, Center for Controlled Environment Agriculture
Phone: (307)766-3299
Email: lwang12@uwyo.edu
The Center for Controlled Environment Agriculture (CEA) leverages the state’s investments in our Science Initiative and Tier-1 Engineering Initiative. This Center is a vital component in driving forward engineering innovation and impacts on indoor agriculture at local and national levels.
Director, Center for Controlled Environment Agriculture
Associate Professor, Civil, Architectural Engineering and Construction Management
Dr. Liping Wang’s research aims to achieve resource-efficient and sustainable controlled environment agriculture (CEA). She works closely with indoor agriculture industry partners and communities to advance indoor agriculture design and operation. She develops integrated modeling to dynamically predict energy, water, and crop yields in CEA and conducts life cycle analysis for CEA.
Associate Director, Center for Controlled Environment Agriculture
Director, Plant Growth & Phenotyping Facility
Dr. Guadagno research aims to delineate the mechanistic basis for plant response to environmental changes to be applied to a variety of CEA settings, from potted plants to hydroponic systems. Her most current work supported by NSF aims to elucidate plant-microbial interactions in different growing systems towards harnessing CEA for tribal communities across Wyoming, New Mexico, and South Dakota. As Director of the Plant Growth & Phenotyping Facility she ensures seamless operations at the facility, serves as the primary point of contact for both external and internal audiences, and fosters cross-disciplinary activities and partnerships, guaranteeing effective communication across campus and beyond towards CEA innovation and integrated workforce development.
Assistant Professor, Electrical Engineering and Computer Science
Dr. Sheshappanavar focuses on the intersection of large language models and controlled-environment agriculture. His group uses large vision language models to create virtual agronomists tools which assist farmers and agriculturists with various agricultural (indoors and outdoors) queries. These valuable tools are helpful for insect pest detection/classification, crop management, etc.
Assistant Professor, Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science
Dr. Majeed's research focuses on developing advanced artificial intelligence, computer vision, sensing, automation, and robotics-based solutions to promote sustainable agricultural production both in controlled environments and in-field settings.
Assistant Professor, School of Computing, Haub School of Environment and Natural Resources
Dr. Jake Hawes' research group explores the interconnections and interdependencies between social, ecological, and technological systems. This research enables stakeholder-driven insights into the ways that food-energy-water systems are evolving and the ways that emerging technologies like Controlled Environment Agriculture might influence sustainability, resilience, and justice in the future. Past work includes carbon and nutrient footprinting of urban agriculture, spatial analysis of urban ag opportunity spaces, and analysis of municipal plans and policies for urban agriculture.
Assistant Professor, Computer Science
Dr. Diksha Shukla’s research focuses on AI foundational models and reasoning systems, aiming to optimize resource management, crop health monitoring, and predictive analytics in controlled environments. Her experience on developing secure IoT and data frameworks to ensure the integrity and efficiency of systems are essential for scalable and sustainable solutions in indoor agriculture. Through her interdisciplinary approach, Dr. Shukla aims to bring innovative technologies and insights to advance automation and sustainability in controlled environment agriculture (CEA).
Assistant Professor, Mathematics, Statistics, Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, School of Computing
Dr. Dane Taylor is an expert on the development of network-based models to study biological and technological systems, investigating how these systems are shaped by the interplay between structure and dynamics.
Assistant Professor, Electrical Engineering and Computer Science
Dr. Zejian Zhou focuses on ways to design autonomous systems under resource constraints. His research interests include autonomous space farming, autonomous hydroponic systems, robotics, resource-constrained machine learning, and optimal resource control in autonomous systems. He also supervises the Autonomous Multi-agent Systems Lab at University of Wyoming.
Associate Professor of Agricultural and Applied Economics
Dr. Hovhannisyan conducts research on a wide range of issues related to consumer food preferences, preference dynamics, and policy implications thereof, health implications of consumer food choices, effectiveness of public policies in curbing tobacco and sweetener consumption, and changing retail competitive landscape and its implications for food markets and consumer welfare.
Associate Professor, Electrical Engineering and Computer Science
Dr. Dongliang Duan is currently an associate professor at the Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science. His research interests are the applications of statistical signal processing, particularly in the monitoring, operation, and control of power systems. He currently teaches undergraduate and graduate courses in both signal processing and power engineering. Dr. Duan’s expertise on power grid, especially microgrid, would contribute to the center for controlled environment agriculture (C-CEA). Specifically, Dr. Duan will study the power issues associated with controlled environment agriculture, e.g. the study the indoor planting systems (IPS) as dispatchable loads in microgrids and the energy optimization for indoor planting systems.
Professor, Department of Botany
Dr. Weinig’s lab works on mechanisms of adaptation to complex settings. These settings include CEA, and the potential role that microbes may play in promoting crop growth.
Dr. Karen Panter has been involved in controlled environment and indoor agriculture since the late 1970s. Her background is greenhouse management, as well as greenhouse crop production. Her career was largely spent in Extension, at Colorado State University (10 years) as a specialist dedicated to the Colorado greenhouse industry, and then the University of Wyoming (UW) (25 years). She worked with greenhouse crop producers on various issues and taught numerous horticulture courses at UW, including Greenhouse Design and Management, Greenhouse Crop Production, and Horticultural Plant Propagation.
Assistant Lecturer, School of Teacher Education
Dr. Rosemary McBride McBride brings expertise in agricultural education and workforce development to advance controlled environment agriculture (CEA). Her planned contributions span research, education, and outreach, with a focus on developing curriculum, investigating workforce needs, and creating educational pathways for students in CEA technologies. Leveraging her background in rural education and agricultural technical systems, Dr. McBride aims to bridge the gap between cutting-edge CEA research and practical implementation, particularly in rural agricultural education programs
Senior Research Associate
Work on understanding the entry points, distributions, and effects of microbes found in CEA settings. In a collaboration with John Oakey's lab, we are looking at the potential use of hydrogels in stabilizing microbial community composition.
Graduate Student
Assist CEA microbial projects as well as study the effects that microbes may have on plant circadian clock function.
Graduate Student
Current Project: Large Vision Language Models (LVLMs) for Controlled Environment Agriculture.
Graduate Student
Current Project: Dynamic integrated modeling for controlled environment agriculture: method and field testing
The study addresses the need for integrated modeling tools to optimize the design and operation of Controlled Environment Agriculture (CEA) facilities by dynamically integrating key components like energy, evapotranspiration (ET), and crop growth.
Graduate Student
Current Project: Commercial Building Indoor Greenery Systems' Effects on Thermal Environment and Occupant Comfort under Climate Change
Emma is a PhD student researching the effects of indoor living walls on building energy use and thermal comfort across different U.S. climate zones. His work explores the cooling benefits of living walls through evapotranspiration and their potential to reduce energy consumption in future climate conditions, providing a sustainable solution to mitigate rising temperatures.
Graduate Student
Current Project: Model Predictive Control for Energy-Efficient Indoor Agriculture
Center for Controlled Environment Agriculture
Dr. Liping Wang
Director, Center for Controlled Environment Agriculture
Phone: (307)766-3299
Email: lwang12@uwyo.edu