NUtech Ventures 2021 Outstanding Graduate Student of the Year: Jackson Stansell

NUtech Author

10/28/2021 Added

34 Plays

Description

The Outstanding Graduate Student of the Year award went to Jackson Stansell, a graduate student in biological systems engineering. The award recognizes a student who has developed a new innovation and is making progress toward commercialization. Stansell has co-developed a management system for fertigation, the application of fertilizer through an irrigation system. He has worked with NUtech to patent the system. In spring 2021, he joined NUtech’s entrepreneurship program to assess the system’s commercial potential by conducting customer interviews.

Searchable Transcript

Search:

[00:00:00.000](upbeat motivational music)
[00:00:04.840]- I'm Jackson Stansell,
[00:00:05.860]I'm a first year PhD student
[00:00:07.980]at the University Nebraska Lincoln and
[00:00:09.180]in the department of biological systems engineering.
[00:00:11.180]So, the focus of my work
[00:00:12.200]is on sensor-based fertigation management.
[00:00:14.450]And essentially, what we're trying to do,
[00:00:15.760]is we are taking multi-spectral images
[00:00:18.120]that are captured via satellite or a drone
[00:00:20.459]of a cornfield canopy.
[00:00:23.160]And we are turning that into fertigation timing decisions.
[00:00:26.477]So, essentially, just using that imagery
[00:00:28.710]to better inform when farmers are deciding
[00:00:31.530]to put nitrogen fertilizer on their crop.
[00:00:34.030]When I came here for my master's degree,
[00:00:37.510]I basically was starting in on this concept.
[00:00:39.900]And there were two real things
[00:00:41.180]that we were trying to achieve.
[00:00:42.013]The first, was trying to scale up the process
[00:00:44.080]to full-scale type of research
[00:00:46.250]on commercial scale corn farms.
[00:00:48.699]And the second part,
[00:00:49.970]which is really honing in on
[00:00:51.440]how do we automate the process of analyzing this imagery,
[00:00:54.890]and basically turning our decision algorithm
[00:00:57.360]into truly just an algorithm that is run based
[00:01:00.150]on the analytics that we're getting out
[00:01:01.400]of these images to eventually convert
[00:01:03.620]to a prescription that a grower can send to a pump.
[00:01:06.096]And it's actuated right there in the field
[00:01:08.278]without any real other user input.
[00:01:11.300]And so, really, the goal of this approach
[00:01:14.480]is to mitigate a lot of the nitrate that is lost
[00:01:18.268]through the soil profile,
[00:01:19.790]by reducing the total amount of nitrogen that's applied,
[00:01:22.140]and also applying nitrogen when it is needed by the crops,
[00:01:24.910]so that we're not losing any sort of yield.
[00:01:27.810]What I love about what I do
[00:01:29.550]is I'm able to help develop the
[00:01:31.920]technologies that are going
[00:01:33.230]to help farmers be more sustainable,
[00:01:35.910]and kind of pursue those goals
[00:01:37.260]that they already have for themselves.
[00:01:39.160]The people here have been phenomenal ever since that point
[00:01:42.230]where we basically went to NUtech,
[00:01:43.540]and said "Hey, what do we have to do
[00:01:44.700]to start protecting this IP?",
[00:01:47.470]they have been nothing but helpful.
[00:01:49.960]They've been extremely responsive almost
[00:01:51.580]to the point that they're the ones, you know,
[00:01:53.460]reminding me of certain deadlines that are upcoming.
[00:01:56.150]They're almost thinking about it more than I am,
[00:01:57.700]which is extremely helpful, being a student,
[00:01:59.691]and also trying to work on the commercialization aspect.
[00:02:03.200]They provided ample opportunities for us
[00:02:04.990]to network with potentially beneficial groups
[00:02:08.210]around the state.
[00:02:09.312]I went through a customer discovery program
[00:02:11.500]that they hosted that has kind of led
[00:02:13.330]to some other opportunities to participate in.
[00:02:15.430]I got to meet Dr. Joe Luck, who is my current advisor.
[00:02:18.900]Laura Thompson has been a great mentor to me,
[00:02:21.480]and Dr. Jim Schepers,
[00:02:23.170]who is an Emeritus faculty member in agronomy.
[00:02:26.060]They've all been really instrumental in me being here.
[00:02:28.430]I'd really like to thank a lot of the members of my team.
[00:02:31.210]So, Tyler Smith, he's our research technologist,
[00:02:33.450]Kelsey Swantek, and Courtney Nelson have been great,
[00:02:35.540]they're our undergraduate interns.
[00:02:36.940]Generally, the University of Nebraska,
[00:02:38.670]I've never felt under-resourced here.
[00:02:40.410]And I think as a graduate student,
[00:02:41.670]that's one of the biggest things
[00:02:42.970]that can make you successful,
[00:02:44.520]is having the resources that you need
[00:02:46.190]to do the work that you want to do.
[00:02:48.030]I'd just like to thank NUtech very much
[00:02:49.880]for giving me this award,
[00:02:51.677]recognizing some of the efforts that I
[00:02:54.120]and my team have put forward
[00:02:56.040]towards this particular project.
[00:02:58.029]I'm just looking forward to making it as successful
[00:03:00.360]as we can.
[00:03:01.285](upbeat motivational music)

The screen size you are trying to search captions on is too small!

You can always jump over to MediaHub and check it out there.

Comments

0 Comments

NUtech Ventures 2021 Outstanding Graduate Student of the Year: Jackson Stansell

Description

Searchable Transcript

Comments icon comment

Related Channels

Comments