Research | Teaching | Extension

Liang Dong, professor of electrical and computer engineering and director of the Microelectronics Research Center at Iowa State University, is set to become the University of Georgia’s newest Georgia Research Alliance Eminent Scholar, effective Aug. 1. At UGA, Dong will be the GRA Eminent Scholar in Precision Agriculture, with a joint appointment in the colleges of Engineering and Agricultural and Environmental Sciences. He will also serve as associate director for research at the Institute for Integrative Precision Agriculture.

The UGA Weed Science team traveled to the Jackson County Extension Center in Newport, Arkansas, for the Southern Weed Science Society's annual Weed Science Contest. Students competed in correctly identifying (and spelling the common name and genus/species correctly) 100 weedy species, solving real-world farmer problems, completing an individual calibration test, working together to calibrate a sprayer for a real-world scenario, and identifying herbicide symptomology for 25 different herbicides. The team also competed in a mystery event — this year it was a good old fashioned egg toss, to encourage the students to have a little fun in a fiercely competitive contest.

This was the largest and most diverse group of students that the UGA Weed Science team has fielded in at least the last decade. There were sixteen graduate students from Weed Science, Precision Ag, Cotton Agronomy, Crop Physiology, and Forage research groups. The group also included an MPPPM student!

Well done, team!

Anish Bhattarai has been selected as the recipient of the 2025 CAES Alumni Association Outstanding Master’s Student Scholarship.

Bhattarai, a graduate student from the Institute of Precision Agriculture under the Department of Crop and Soil Sciences, is currently working with Dr. Bastos on research related to variable rates of nitrogen application in cotton.

Congratulations, Anish!