ACES Expert Honored as National Ag Innovation Leader

ACES

A scientist in the College of Agricultural, Consumer and Environmental Sciences at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign is the recipient of the 2025 national agInnovation award for Excellence in Agricultural Research Innovation.

  • Lauren Quinn

Kaiyu Guan, professor in the Department of Natural Resources and Environmental Sciences, received the recognition for his global reputation in agroecosystem science and his pioneering integration of artificial intelligence, satellite sensing, process modeling, and supercomputing to improve food security and environmental sustainability. The national award comes after Guan was honored in the same category by agInnovation's North Central region in April.

"I am deeply honored to receive this national recognition, representing the land-grant mission that I am proud to serve. Our work is dedicated to serving both people and the land," Guan said. "This honor belongs to all of our team members and collaborators. Our journey has only just begun, and we look forward to driving even more innovation in the future."

In its award letter, agInnovation North Central noted Guan's outstanding leadership as Chief Scientist of NASA Acres and founding director of the Agroecosystem Sustainability Center at Illinois, where he leads interdisciplinary teams to advance modern agriculture to achieve both high productivity and environmental sustainability. Guan has garnered over $40 million in research funding, published more than 180 scholarly articles, and received other prestigious national awards.

"Dr. Guan's research represents an exciting example of how we deliver on the land-grant mission in our modern world," said ACES Associate Dean for Research Rod Johnson, who nominated Guan for the award. "On the one hand, his use of cutting-edge tools in service of the public good is how we've always operated at ACES. But at the same time, his literal out-of-this-world approach is truly innovative and deserving of this recognition."

agInnovation represents the national voice of the country's State Agricultural Experiment Stations (SAES), which were established by the Hatch Act in 1887. These lands and research facilities are located at each state's land grant institutions, and are the sites where the majority of publicly funded agricultural research takes place. agInnovation connects researchers working in SAES across the country, catalyzing multistate research collaborations designed to address critical challenges in agriculture, food systems, and natural resource management.

Guan - along with ACES Dean Germán Bollero, recipient of agInnovation North Central's 2025 AgInnovation Excellence in Leadership Award - will be honored at an awards ceremony in September.

Guan is also affiliated with the Carl R. Woese Institute for Genomic Biology, the Institute for Sustainability, Energy, and Environment, the National Center for Supercomputing Applications, the Center for Digital Agriculture, and the Siebel School of Computing and Data Science at U. of I.

Research in the College of ACES is made possible in part by Hatch funding from USDA's National Institute of Food and Agriculture.

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