Jiating Li is a new Assistant Professor in the Department of Biosystems Engineering at the University of Manitoba (UM). She earned her Ph.D. in Agricultural and Biological Systems Engineering from the University of Nebraska-Lincoln (UNL) in August 2023, following her M.S. degree in the same field from UNL in 2019. Her undergraduate studies were in the Department of Biosystems Engineering at Zhejiang University in China. Before joining UM, she had one year of postdoctoral experience at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign.
Jiating’s prior research focused on using Unmanned Aerial Systems (UAS) and advanced data analytics to tackle critical challenges in crop improvement (e.g., yield prediction, stress detection, plant phenotyping) and management (e.g., water and nitrogen management). She has developed interdisciplinary expertise spanning agricultural engineering, data science, and plant science.
At UM, Jiating will delve into a broad range of digital technologies to advance Canadian agricultural and food production systems. These technologies include, but are not limited to, ground- and aerial-based automation systems, optical sensing, Internet-of-Things (IoTs), physics-based models, and artificial intelligence (AI). Through intensive collaborations with crop breeders, plant physiologists, soil scientists, animal scientists, and computer engineers, Jiating aims to develop robust systems that promote agricultural productivity as well as sustainability.