Alakananda Mitra

Bio Summary

Alakananda Mitra, Ph.D., is a research assistant professor at the NWC. She works as a visiting computer scientist in the USDA-Agricultural Research Service in Beltsville, Maryland, USA at the joint multi-national software development effort of UNL and Adaptive Cropping Systems Laboratory (ACSL), USDA-ARS to further develop the crop and soil simulation models, graphical user interfaces, databases, and other suitable agro-climatology modeling tools. She is also working on AI-based crop models to accurately predict crop yield.

Since the beginning of her career, Mitra has placed a strong emphasis on solving real-world problems with AI and ML techniques and making AI solutions widely available, affordable, and more accessible to people. She started her research career solving problems in image forensics related to social media. However, moved by the effects of climate change, she began working concurrently on a variety of agricultural issues. Along with software development, her current research includes:

• Applying machine learning and deep learning technologies to smart agriculture.
• Proposing AI-based Internet of Agricultural Things (IoAT) frameworks for addressing agricultural research issues.
• Crop Yield Prediction using machine learning techniques.
• Plant Disease and Damage Detection using computer vision.
• AI in Water Quality Measurement.

Mitra received her doctoral degree in Computer Science and Engineering from the University of North Texas, Denton, USA, in December 2022. She received numerous academic awards, honors, and travel grants throughout her academic career. During her doctoral research, she received the Outstanding Early-Stage Doctoral Student Award, Department of Computer Science and Engineering, University of North Texas, 2022. Mitra is a published author of articles in top-tier peer-reviewed journals. She has presented her papers at various international conferences. She received the Best Paper Award at the 19th OITS International Conference on Information Technology (OCIT), 2021, and was nominated for the Best Paper Award at the IEEE International Symposium on Smart Electronic Systems (iSES), 2021. She is also an inventor of two provisional US patents. Her goal is to build the next generation of skilled researchers, spread education among non-traditional students, encourage women in computing, make solutions from state-of-the-art technologies, and make them accessible to society to ensure no one is left behind.