Data-driven techniques help boost agricultural productivity by increasing yields, reducing losses and cutting down input costs. However, these techniques have seen sparse adoption owing to high costs of manual data collection and limited connectivity solutions. In this talk we will describe our innovations that leverage Internet of Things, Artificial Intelligence, and Edge Compute in the Farm and Space, to help make affordable digital agriculture solutions. We will also present our product based on this research, which is in preview, and can be used by partners to build their digital agriculture solutions, and how Generative AI can help transform digital agriculture.
RANVEER CHANDRA is the General Manager in M365 Copilot and the Chief Technology Officer of Agri-Food at Microsoft. Previously, Dr. Chandra has held various leadership roles, including the Managing Director for Research for Industry, Chief Scientist of Microsoft Azure Global, and Head of Networking Research at Microsoft Research, Redmond. His research has shipped in multiple Microsoft products, including XBOX, Azure, and Windows. He is the inventor of Microsoft FarmBeats—Big Data, AI, Cloud & Edge for Agriculture, which is a Microsoft product, and is being used by multiple agri-food companies. FarmBeats was featured by Bill Gates on GatesNotes, and he has been invited to present to the Secretary of Agriculture, and on TV White Spaces to the FCC Chairman. Dr. Chandra has published more than 100 papers and holds over 125 patents granted by the USPTO. He is an IEEE Fellow and ACM Fellow, and has won several awards, including the MIT Technology Review’s Top Innovators Under 35 and was recognized by the Newsweek magazine as America’s 50 most Disruptive Innovators (2021). Dr. Chandra has an undergraduate degree from IIT Kharagpur, India and a Ph.D. in Computer Science from Cornell University.