Guha Lab

The Subterranean Macroscope

Sensor Networks for Understanding, Modeling, & Managing Soil Processes

The Subterranean Macroscope: Sensor Networks for Understanding, Modeling, and Managing Soil Processes

November 1-2, 2017

The Gleacher Center
450 Cityfront Plaza Drive, Chicago IL
http://www.gleachercenter.com

The Subterranean Macroscope: Sensor Networks for Understanding, Modeling, and Managing Soil Processes is an NSF funded workshop hosted by the University of Chicago from November 1 – 2, 2017 in Chicago.

This workshop will bring together researchers in soil science (biological, chemical and physical nature of soil), plant sciences, crop modeling, nanotechnology and sensors, sensor networks, wireless communications, and data analytics to develop a vision for:

  1. A wide-scale, high-resolution subterranean sensor network able to accurately sense relevant biological, physical and chemical soil parameters. The vision will include the development of new sensors for measuring parameters of importance to the soil and plant science communities.
  2. A trajectory for curating, analyzing, and using the resulting data to develop the next generation of models and management strategies for soil evolution, agricultural intensification, and water conservation.

A secondary goal for our workshop is to offer the scientific community a clear assessment of research opportunities in this area, with a view toward initiating new research programs. The meeting will culminate with short presentations from the collaborative focus areas.

Meeting registration is by invitation-only.

Scientific Advisory Committee Members

Supratik Guha
Professor, Institute for Molecular Engineering, University of Chicago
Division Director, Nanoscience and Technology
Argonne National Laboratory
 

Charles (Chuck) W. Rice
University Distinguished Professor
Mary L. Vanier University Professorship
Chair, Board on Agriculture and Natural Resources, National Academies of Science, Engineering, and Medicine
Kansas State University
 

Ali Mohamed
Division Director of Environmental Systems
Institute of Bioenergy, Climate, and Environment
USDA | National Institute of Food and Agriculture
 

Ian Foster
Arthur Holly Compton Distinguished Service Professor
Department of Computer Science, University of Chicago
Distinguished Fellow, MCS Division
Senior Scientist, MCS Division, Argonne National Laboratory
 

Monisha Ghosh
Research Professor, Institute for Molecular Engineering
Associate Member, Department of Computer Science
University of Chicago
Affiliate, Argonne National Laboratory
 

Roberto Cesar Izaurralde
Professor, Department of Geographical Sciences
University of Maryland
 

Steven R. Evett, Acting Deputy Administrator
Natural Resources and Sustainable Agricultural Systems
USDA | Agricultural Research Service

Hotel

  • To book a room call 1-800-KIMPTON (1-800-546-7866) to reserve (you should ask for the group rate ($199 plus applicable taxes) under the “The University of Chicago – Fall Block”). You may also book online via: University of Chicago - Fall 2017.
  • Group rate deadline: October 13th, 2017

Kimpton Hotel Monaco Chicago
225 North Wabash Avenue
Chicago, IL 60601
http://www.monaco-chicago.com/
1-800-546-7866

Air Travel

  • Chicago has two major airports: O’Hare International (to the north) and Midway International Airport (to the south).

To be reimbursed for your allowable travel expenses, please complete the travel reimbursement worksheet and return to Anita Owens by email at ablair@uchicago.edu or by mail at:

Anita Owens
Pritzker School of Molecular Engineering
5640 S. Ellis Avenue, Room 295
Chicago, IL 60637

Please remember to attach the following:

 Travel Reimbursement Worksheet
• A scanned copy of your travel tickets with the amount you paid and ticket number
• A valid proof of identity
​• Preferred mailing address for reimbursement check

From airport to hotel

Chicago O'Hare International Airport (ORD):

  • Train: Kimpton Hotel Monaco Chicago is approximately 45 minutes by train from O'Hare International Airport. Take the Blue Line to Clark and Lake. Walk four blocks east on Lake Street to Wabash and turn north. Cost about $5.00.
  • Cab: From O'Hare, a cab takes 25-35 minutes, depending on traffic, and the fare is about $35-$40 before tolls and tip.

Chicago Midway International Airport (MDW):

  • Train: Kimpton Hotel Monaco Chicago is approximately 30 minutes by train from Midway International Airport. Take the Orange Line to the State and Lake stop. The hotel is one block east and one block north on Wabash. Cost about $3.00.
  • Cab: From Chicago Midway, a cab takes 20-30 minutes, depending on traffic, and the fare is about $26-$30 before tolls and tip.

From hotel to workshop venue

  • Kimpton Hotel Monaco is a short (and depending on the weather) pleasant walk to the workshop venue at the Gleacher Center and takes approximately 10 minutes. From the hotel head east on Lake Street and then head north on Michigan Avenue. Turn right on Pioneer Court and then take another right onto Cityfront Plaza Dr.

  • Link to Google Map Directions
  • The workshop venue is approximately 4 minutes away by taxi or Uber/Lyft.

Parking

Gleacher Center Information

Parking lots in the immediate area 

  • 240 E. Illinois St. ("Upper" Illinois St.) - Located just across from the Gleacher Center, enter from Cityfront Plaza.
  • Legacy Parking, 201 E. Illinois ("lower" Illinois at Columbus) - outside lot, just north of the NBC Tower
  • Legacy Parking, NBC Tower garage (inside parking) - access garage entrance from lower Illinois and St. Clair;
  • Equitable Building, 401 N. Michigan Ave. (indoor garage) - there's an inside pedistrian walkway to the Gleacher Center
    •      — Entrance is from lower North Water Street
  • 219 E. Water Street (access from lower Illinois and St. Clair)

Other Parking Services (online search)

  • SpotHero 

The Subterranean Macroscope Plenary Speakers

November 1st - 2nd, 2017

Nick Dokoozlian

Vice President, Viticulture, Chemistry and Enology
E&J Gallo Winery


Nick Dokoozlian is Vice President, Viticulture, Chemistry and Enology at E. & J. Gallo Winery in Modesto, California. His group is responsible for research in the areas of grape and wine production, including the development of growing practices which improve the yield and quality of grapes, the development and application of grape and wine chemical metrics as well as research on the impacts of processing, fermentation and aging practices on wine composition and sensory characteristics. He is also responsible for managing external research collaborations and relations with universities and other research agencies.

Jerry Hatfield

Laboratory Director and Supervisory Plant Physiologist
National Laboratory for Agriculture and the Environment


Dr. Jerry L. Hatfield is the Laboratory Director of the USDA-ARS National Laboratory for Agriculture in Ames, Iowa, and co-PI on the Agriculture Model Improvement and Intercomparison Project. He graduated from Kansas State University in 1971 with a B.S., University of Kentucky in 1972 with a M.S., and in 1975 with a Ph.D. from Iowa State University in Agricultural Climatology. HIs personal research focuses on quantifying the interactions among the components of the soil-plant-atmosphere system to quantify resilience of cropping systems to climate change and development of techniques to enhance decision-making for agriculture. He is a Fellow of the American Society of Agronomy, Crop Science Society of America, and Soil Science Society of America and Past-President of the American Society of Agronomy and member of the American Meterological Society, American Geophysical Union and Soil and Water Conservation Society. He is the recipient of numerous awards and was elected to the ARS Hall of Fame in 2014 for his research on improving agriculture and environmental quality and the Hugh Hammond Bennett award for his national and international work on conservation. He is the author or co-author of 443 refereed publications and the editor of 17 monographs.

Rajakkannu Mutharasan

Frank A. Fletcher Professor of Chemical and Biological Engineering
Drexel University


Raj Mutharasan received his bachelor's in chemical engineering from Indian Institute of Technology Madras (India) and Ph.D from Drexel University in 1973. After a postdoctoral year at the University of Toronto in Canada, he joined Drexel University on the faculty and has been there since 1974. Currently, he is the Frank A. Fletcher Professor of Chemical and Biological Engineering. During 2014-2017 he served as the Program Director of Nanobiosensing at the NSF. He has served in many administrative capacities at Drexel including as the Interim Dean of College of Engineering (1997-2000). He led Engineering Curriculum Innovation Program – a seven university coalition on engineering education - funded by the National Science Foundation during 1995-2004. He is a Fellow of AIChE (2000), Fellow of AIMBE (2006) and Fellow of the AAAS (2011) and serves on the Editorial Board of Applied Biochemistry and Biotechnology. His research interests are in biosensors and process biotechnology. He has published extensively in the areas of biosensors, bioreactors and materials processing. At Drexel, Raj directs research on various biosensor platforms for detecting pathogens, proteins, and DNA. His biosensors research has been funded by the NSF, USDA, EPA, Pennsylvania Department of Health, and by the Department of Homeland Security. Mutharasan’s inventions have led to multiple patents and have been licensed to two start-up companies.   

Jo Handelsman

Director of the Wisconsin Institute for Discovery at the University of Wisconsin-Madison
Vilas Research Professor
Howard Hughes Medical Institute Professor


Dr. Jo Handelsman is currently the Director of the Wisconsin Institute for Discovery at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, as well as a Vilas Research Professor and Howard Hughes Medical Institute Professor.  Previously, she served for President Obama for three years as the Associate Director for Science in the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP). She received her Ph.D. at the University of Wisconsin-Madison in Molecular Biology and has served on the faculties of UW-Madison and Yale University.  Dr. Handelsman has authored over 100 papers, 30 editorials and 3 books. She is responsible for groundbreaking studies in microbiology and gender in science.

Ian Foster

Arthur Holly Compton Distinguished Service Professor
Department of Computer Science, University of Chicago
Distinguished Fellow, MCS Division
Senior Scientist, MCS Division, Argonne National Laboratory


Ian Foster is a Professor of Computer Science at the University of Chicago and a Senior Scientist, Distinguished Fellow, and director of the Data Sciences and Learning division at Argonne National Laboratory. Originally from New Zealand, he has lived in Chicago for longer than he likes to admit. Ian has a long record of research contributions in high-performance computing, distributed systems, and data-driven discovery. He has also led US and international projects that have produced widely used software systems and scientific computing infrastructures. He has published hundreds of scientific papers and eight books on these and other topics. Ian is an elected fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, the Association for Computing Machinery, and the British Computer Society. His awards include the British Computer Society's Lovelace Medal, the IEEE Tsutomu Kanai award, and honorary doctorates from CINVESTAV, Mexico, and the University of Canterbury, New Zealand.

Mehmet Can Vuran

Susan J. Rosowski Associate Professor
Cyber-Physical Networking Laboratory
Computer Science and Engineering
University of Nebraska-Lincoln


Mehmet Can (John) Vuran his B.Sc. degree in Electrical and Electronics Engineering from Bilkent University , Ankara, Turkey in 2002, and his M.S. and Ph.D. degrees in Electrical and Computer Engineering from the Broadband and Wireless Networking Laboratory, School of Electrical and Computer Engineering, Georgia Institute of Technology, Atlanta, GA. in 2004 and 2007, respectively.    Currently, he is the Susan J. Rosowski Associate Professor of Computer Science and Engineering at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. Dr. Vuran was recognized as a Highly Cited Researcher by Thomson Reuters "in recognition of ranking among the top 1% of researchers for most cited documents in Computer Science". Dr. Vuran was awarded an NSF CAREER award for the project "Bringing Wireless Sensor Networks Underground'" and is the co-author of Wireless Sensor Networks textbook.  

Hendrik Hamann (Keynote)

Distinguished Researcher and Research Manager for Physical Analytics,
IBM Thomas J. Watson Research Center


Dr. Hendrik F. Hamann is currently a Senior Manager and Distinguished Research Staff Member at the IBM T.J. Watson Research Center, Yorktown Heights, NY. He received his PhD from the University of Göttingen in Germany. In 1999 he joined the IBM T.J. Watson Research Center, where is leading the Physical Analytics and cognitive Internet of Things program. Hamann’s current research interest includes sensor networks, sensor-based physical modeling, machine-learning, artificial intelligence as well as big data technologies. Hamann has authored and co-authored more than 100 peer-reviewed scientific papers and holds over 110 patents and has over 100 pending patent applications. Dr. Hamann is an IBM Master Inventor, a member to the IBM Academy of Technology and has served on governmental committees such as the National Academy of Sciences, the National Science Foundation and as an industrial advisor to Universities. He won several awards including the 2016 AIP Prize for Industrial Applications of Physics. He is a member of the American Physical Society (APS), Optical Society of America (OSA), The Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) and the NY Academy of Sciences.

NSF Sensor Workshop Participant List (University of Chicago)

November 1st-2nd, 2017
(As of 10/30/2017)

Name Institution
Agnelo Silva METER Group Inc.
Alez Szalay Johns Hopkins University
Ali Mohamed USDA NIFA
Alison Thompson USDA ARS
Alok Choudhary Northwestern University
Ana Cram University of Texas at El Paso
Anita Owens University of Chicago
Ann Von Lehmen National Science Foundation
April Ulery New Mexico State University
Benjamin Diroll Argonne National Laboratory
Brandi Schottel National Science Foundation
Bruno Basso Michigan State University
Calden Carroll Climate Corporation
Charles W. Rice Kansas State University
Chenzhong Li National Science Foundation
Christopher Topp Danforth Plant Science Center
Curtis D. Jones University of Maryland
Daniel Northrup Contractor to ARPA-E, Booz Allen
Dave Myrold Oregon State University
David Baltensperger Texas A&M University
David Blaauw University of Michigan
David Brown Washington State University
David Hoover USDA - NRCS
David Knaebel USDA ARS
David LeBauer University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Deb Agarwal Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory
Edgar Spalding University of Wisconsin-Madison
Greg Gandenberger Uptake
Greg Meyer National Science Foundation
Hendrik Hamann IBM Thomas J. Watson Research Center
Henry Lin Pennsylvania State University
Hongda Chen USDA NIFA
Ian Foster University of Chicago
Jacob Gold University of Chicago
James Jones National Science Foundation
James Krogmeier Purdue University
Jennifer Pett-Ridge Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory
Jerry Hatfield National Laboratory for Agriculture and the Environment
Jim Tang Marine Biological Laboratory
Jo Handelsman University of Wisconsin-Madison
Johanie Rivera-Zayas Kansas State University
Jonathan Wynn National Science Foundation
Julia Lane University of Chicago
Julie Jastrow Argonne National Laboratory
Karl Rockne National Science Foundation
Katalin Szlavecz Johns Hopkins University
Ken Birman Cornell University
Ken Williams Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory
Kevin Ibarra West Texas A&M University
Mehmet Can Vuran University of Nebraska-Lincoln
Michael Haley University of Oregon
Monisha Ghosh University of Chicago
Nick Dokoozlian E&J Gallo Winery
Rajakkannu Mutharasan Drexel University
Ranveer Chandra Microsoft
Raphael Viscarra Rossel Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organization (CSIRO)
Robert Horton Iowa State University
Roberto Cesar Izauuralde University of Maryland
Roser Matamala Argonne National Laboratory
Ryan Locicero National Science Foundation
Stephen Welch Kansas State University
Steve Evett USDA ARS
Steve Shafer Soil Health Institute
Supratik Guha University of Chicago
Tyson Ochsner Oklahoma State University
Viacheslav Adamchuk McGill University
Will Kent University of Chicago
William B. McGill University of Northern British Columbia
Xufeng Zhang Argonne National Laboratory
Zoe Cardon Marine Biological Laboratory

Logistical/Travel Questions

Anita Owens
(773) 702-3018
ablair@uchicago.edu

All Other Questions

Julia Lane
(773) 702-6284
jlane2@uchicago.edu