By Blake Jackson
The Cornell Institute for Digital Agriculture (CIDA) has announced the 2025 recipients of its Research Innovation Fund (RIF) faculty and student grants. These grants support innovative, cross-disciplinary projects aimed at transforming global food systems through digital technologies.
This year’s funded projects range from AI-powered dairy diagnostics to virtual reality programs encouraging youth engagement in agriculture, all promising significant real-world benefits.
“Solving today’s agri-food challenges demands more than innovation-it requires collaboration across disciplines, technologies, and communities,” said Fengqi You, CIDA codirector and the Roxanne E. and Michael J. Zak Professor in Energy Systems Engineering in Cornell Engineering.
“The Research Innovation Fund plays a critical role in this mission by empowering faculty and students to pursue bold, early-stage ideas that can drive meaningful change from the lab to the landscape.”
CIDA, based at Cornell University, unites engineering, computing, life sciences, veterinary medicine, and social sciences to tackle food system challenges through data and digital tools.
“AI has never been more important and learning how to wield and apply AI to digital agriculture is critical,” said Hakim Weatherspoon, CIDA codirector and computer science professor. “CIDA is a beacon of light enabling Cornell students and faculty scientists via the CIDA Research Innovation Fund to explore and advance the state of the art, improving the environment and society.”
The RIF offers one-year seed funding in two categories: Planning Grants (up to $15,000) to develop early ideas into large-scale proposals, and Seed Grants (up to $30,000) for testing innovative, high-impact solutions. Projects must involve faculty from at least two different Cornell colleges and represent new collaborations.
Awardees will present their work at the October 21, 2025, CIDA workshop and in the newly launched Cornell course, AI for Digital Agriculture.
“Supporting new cross-disciplinary collaborations among researchers in diverse disciplines from different colleges is at the core of CIDA’s mission,” said Julio Giordano, codirector of CIDA and professor of animal science in the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences (CALS). “These RIF-funded projects exemplify the potential transformative value of innovation across engineering, data science, and agriculture.”
Student grants also support innovative research under dual faculty mentorship, with projects addressing topics like automated calf health diagnostics and grapevine genomics, showcasing the program’s broad impact on sustainable food production.
Photo Credit: cornell-university
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