Spring 2016AGRICULTURAL AND BIOLOGICAL ENGINEERINGABE@Illinois

Welcome to the Spring 2016 issue of ABE@Illinois. I hope you continue to enjoy receiving this communication from our department and reading about the departmental highlights that we are very proud to share.

Because of the current budget situation we are experiencing, one of the important topics being discussed on our campus at this moment is cost management and revenue generation that will sustain and enhance the advancement of our goals as an excellent academic institution. Our department has taken an approach of mapping our outcomes and deliverables to the values and impacts of our activities. We are also improving our understanding of the relationship between our investments in activities and the returns generated by the activities. We have identified several key short-term and long-term actions including growth in student enrollments and instructional units, efficient use of faculty and staff resources, and increase in externally funded activities and philanthropic gifts. We welcome your advice during our deliberation and your support while we implement our planned actions; especially on enhancing the values and impacts of our programs.

While strategizing to chart our department’s future, we also revisited some quantitative metrics of our recent past. Some information about our educational programs may be of interest to you. We have a total of 355 undergraduate students and 94 graduate students. As a comparison, eight years ago, we had 186 undergraduate students and 46 graduate students, while the number of tenure system faculty stays the same at 19. We have also doubled our annual total departmental instructional units (IUs) to 6290. The IUs for each course taught are calculated by “number of students multiplied by number credit hours.” In addition, a PSM in Bioenergy program, formally administered directly by the College of Agricultural, Consumer and Environmental Sciences (ACES), was moved into our department in Fall 2015.

We are very excited about our increased contribution to the educational mission of our colleges, campus, and university. We are prepared to continue advancing our goals guided by the new ABE@Illinois Vision 2020 Strategic Plan (http://bit.ly/ABE2020).

We very much look forward to staying connected with all of you.

Best regards,

KC Ting

Department Head

Greetings from Agricultural and Biological Engineering

K.C. Ting,Professor and Head

ABE@ILLINOIS SPRING 2016

EDITORSMolly Bentsen

Anne Marie Boone Leanne Lucas

Published by the Department of Agricultural and Biological Engineering of the College of Agricultural, Consumer and Environmental Sciences and the College of Engineering at the University of Illinois at

Urbana Champaign

338 Agricultural Engineering Sciences Building

1304 W. Pennsylvania Ave. Urbana, IL 61801

Phone: (217) 333 • 3570 E-mail: abe@illinois.edu

THIS ISSUEProfile Emeritus Mitchell enjoys family and hobbies in retirement ....................1

Athletes in ABE ..........................2

Extension Program Extension program helps make aerial spraying safe and efficient ....................................5

Celebrate ABE professors receive major grant funding .......................6

Research Tian’s research in UAVs continues to improve precision agriculture .....................8

Alumni Spotlight All in the family ..............................10

ABE 100 Helping freshmen navigate a year of change...........................12

ON THE COVERGraduate student Adam Anderson

works on the UAV that is used to test spray deposition and performance

PROFILE EMERITUS

J. Kent Mitchell, professor emeritus in ABE, was an undergraduate student at Iowa State College (now Iowa State University) in the mid-1950s, during the height of the Cold War. “Being in ROTC [Reserve Officers’ Training Corps] was required for all healthy males,” he said. “I started in Air Force ROTC and switched to Army advanced ROTC.”

Mitchell spent six weeks at an ROTC summer camp in 1956, and married Marlene Reynolds a week later. “Marlene and I lived in married student housing at Iowa State, and I graduated with a bachelor’s degree in agricultural engineering in June of 1957,” said Mitchell. “I worked for two-and-a-half months with the Soil Conservation Service [SCS] in Marion, Iowa, before reporting to the Army. I was stationed at Fort Bliss, Texas and completed the basic course for missile officers. I was assigned to a NIKE-AJAX Air Defense missile unit in the defense of the Pittsburgh metropolitan area.”

After his active duty ended in 1959, Mitchell returned to the SCS in Greenfield, Iowa. “I was there for three years, and my engineering aide and I designed and supervised the construction of 30 small dams a year plus other soil conservation structures.”

Mitchell returned to Iowa State for his master’s in ag engineering in 1962. In 1964 he came to Illinois and the Department of Agricultural Engineering as a research associate and instructor. He earned his Ph.D. in 1970 and continued with the department until his retirement in 2000.

Mitchell taught 14 different ag engineering and ag mech courses in soil and water and advised 23 graduate students. His research focused on soil erosion and water quality and included rainfall-runoff studies at Allerton Park and farms, soil erodibility studies at reclaimed strip mines and cropland erosion studies using rainfall simulators, and water quality studies in the Little Vermillion River Watershed.

Mitchell received the College of Engineering Everitt Award for Teaching Excellence, the ACES Senior Faculty Award for Excellence in Teaching, and the ACES Paul A. Funk Recognition Award. He is an ASABE Fellow and was awarded the ASABE Hancor Soil and Water Engineering Award.

Mitchell said he and his family benefited from various travels and sabbaticals. “We spent an academic year in Madison, Wisconsin, and another in Oxford, Mississippi. We were in Pietermaritzburg, South Africa, and Warsaw, Poland, for a semester each.” As an aside to younger faculty, he said, “Don’t decline a sabbatical because of your children’s activities or

reluctance. It enriches their lives to learn about other places and customs. Our second son was a junior in high school and made a career choice because of his associations in Madison. Our youngest son rode an ostrich in South Africa – you aren’t going to get to do that in Illinois!”

Mitchell was educational advisor to the Illinois Land Improvement Association the last few years of his career and continues to work with them as

certification examiner. He has been active in his church, serving on the Board of Trustees in addition to other committees. He joined the Boy Scouts at a young age, attained the rank of Eagle Scout, and has been a registered Scout or Scout Adult Leader most of his life.

He renewed his interest in the French horn, after a forty-year hiatus, and now plays with the Parkland Concert Band. He took a course in musical instrument repair and estimates he’s repaired and sold or given away 60-plus instruments. He and Marlene also became involved in genealogical research when Marlene learned that her ancestors came on the Mayflower. “It took several years of searching records to prove the descendent line before she became a member of the Mayflower Society.”

The Mitchells have been married 60 years and have four adult children – Doug, Ted, Linda, and Chris – as well as fourteen grandchildren and one great-grandchild. Kent and Marlene care for a four-year-old granddaughter every school day and they like to travel to grandchildren’s special events in Illinois, Virginia, and Idaho.

“I have been blessed to be a faculty member in the agricultural engineering department at Illinois,” Mitchell concluded. “We have had many good friends and mentors here, and we appreciate the opportunities presented to us here and in the travels available because of our associations with a great department and college.”

Mitchell enjoys family and hobbies in retirement

Marlene and J. Kent Mitchell

Spring 2016 | ABE@Illinois | 1

SARAH GARROW

The influence of a friend brought Sarah Garrow to the Club Cross-Country (XC) team this year, her senior year of college. “Last summer I studied abroad in Uruguay,” said Garrow. “One of the girls in the program with me has been on the XC team since her freshman year, and she encouraged me to join.”

Garrow is an ABE major with a specialization in off-road equipment engineering. She played soccer through high school, so she was no stranger to running. “I stopped playing soccer when I came to college and began running on my own for exercise. What I missed most was being part of a team.”

Garrow said she was nervous joining as a senior, but quickly realized “I had made a great decision. Being part of a team helped me push myself harder than what I would do on my own. They encouraged and inspired me to work through the pain and exhaustion of the difficult workouts.”

During the season, two workout days might include progression runs of five to seven miles on Tuesdays plus a 2k run at “threshold pace,” three 1-mile runs at “race” pace, and three to five 400-meter runs

on Fridays. Wednesdays are hill workout days, and Monday, Thursday and Saturday are recovery days, which means running five miles at a comfortable pace. Sundays involve long runs (7–10 miles) done at a comfortable pace.

It’s a demanding schedule, but Garrow loves her sport. “I will definitely continue running distance after graduation,” Garrow said. “I want to start running half-marathons and maybe marathons down the line.”

ABE students push themselves in many ways. Some travel abroad to work with non-profit organizations. Others take on leadership roles in our department or college. Still others combine athletics and academics in what can be a grueling schedule. Let us introduce you to five such student-athletes: some play club sports, and others are on an intercollegiate team. The common denominator? Love of their sport propels them to give their best.

Athletes in ABESarah Garrow runs with the Club Cross Country team

Being part of a team made me push myself harder than what I would do on my own.

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DANA BRECKLIN

Dana Brecklin, a junior in ABE, is a member and current treasurer of the Illinois women’s rowing team. Brecklin’s day begins between 5:00 and 6:00 a.m.—about 30 miles away at Homer Lake if weather permits. In inclement weather the team practices on rowing machines at the university’s ARC (Activities and Recreation Center). They often practice on Saturday, and they try to lift weights twice a week, outside of normal practice time.

Because competitions are usually on the weekend, Brecklin seldom misses class. Though when the team attends the San Diego Crew Classic, a two-day competition, Brecklin’s instructors are always understanding.

“I find I incur more problems as a result of training,” she said. “With 5:00 a.m. practices, an 8:00 a.m. class can be a challenge. I’m certainly awake in time, but I often show up cold, wet and hungry.”

Brecklin said being part of a sport makes her prioritize every minute of the day. “Balancing academic and athletic time can be difficult, and it’s easy to get overwhelmed. If I ever need help in a class, it’s likely someone on the team has already taken it. All of our coaches are engineering grad students and more than willing to help, or they find someone who can.

“My roommate [also a rower] and I plan to row a double competitively for decades to come,” she concluded. “Rowing is an integral part of my life, and I can’t imagine my life without it.”

KENDRA ZEMAN

Kendra Zeman, a senior in ABE, is on the women’s wheelchair basketball team. “I’m one of nine women on the team, and we compete against colleges all over the country,” said Zeman. “We play in specialized chairs on regulation basketball courts and follow a schedule similar to the able-bodied basketball teams.”

When she was 16, Zeman was injured playing the sport she loves. “Then my senior year of high school, I discovered wheelchair basketball. I began playing with a local team, where I was recruited to the University of Illinois to play. I had been an athlete since I was young, so not being able to play sports after my injury was devastating. Learning about wheelchair basketball was my opportunity to once again play a sport I loved.”

Zeman said time management is what allows her to pursue athletics in addition to academics. The team often leaves for a tournament on Thursday or Friday, so she does miss some classes, but “I have had wonderful experiences with my professors, who have been very understanding and accommodating,” she said.

Being a student-athlete requires sacrifice, said Zeman, which means spending less time with friends because of practice and games. “But it has helped me grow in so many ways. I’ve learned a lot about leadership, hard work and teamwork.”

Although there are opportunities to compete professionally in Europe, Zeman said, “When I graduate, I plan on focusing on my career as an engineer and just playing basketball recreationally.”

Dana Brecklin, far right, with her team at the San Diego Crew Classic in 2015

With 5:00 am practices and an 8:00 am class. . . I often show up cold, wet and hungry.

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Kendra Zeman takes a shot against Milwaukee

Spring 2016 | ABE@Illinois | 3

MALLORY GORMAN

“Horses have always been a part of my life, and I want to keep it that way for as long as possible,” said Mallory Gorman, a sophomore in ABE. Gorman has been riding horses since childhood, so joining the Illini Equestrians RSO and the Illini Equestrians competitive riding team was a natural fit. “I love being around horses at school and getting lessons from experts to improve my riding.”

Gorman said before every show, riders are required to take at least two lessons from the trainer at the barn where they ride. “We ride a different horse at every lesson in order to improve our skills. We never know what horse we are going to ride; we draw the name of the horse out of a hat just minutes before we show. So we need to be able to ride any type of horse with no warm-up time.” The team competes against other collegiate club teams, including Purdue, Ball State, and Saint Mary of the Woods.

Gorman said being part of this team has given her the advantage of meeting new friends, getting exercise she enjoys, and providing “some great memories that I can look back on years down the road. I may not always compete, but I will always ride for fun. And if I decide to stay for grad school, maybe I’ll join the alumni Illinois equestrian team!”

MATSEN DZIEDZIC

Matsen Dziedzic, another junior in TSM, is a thrower on the men’s track and field team. He throws shot put, hammer and weight.

“Everyone knows the shot put, but most people are less familiar with the hammer and the weight,” said Dziedzic. “Both are balls attached to a handle, although the hammer has a longer wire between the ball and the handle.”

Dziedzic and his teammates throw and do technical training every morning, with a stretching/recovery day on Wednesday and weekends off. In season, the team works out Monday through Wednesday. Thursday is a travel day, and competitions are held on Friday and Saturday.

“During the season, we typically miss Thursday and Friday classes,” said Dziedzic. “Most teachers are very understanding, and they’re willing to make it work with my busy schedule.” He admitted training can take a physical toll during the school year. Once he fell asleep in class, “snoring to the point that the professor stopped lecturing.”

Dziedzic said two of the best resources available to student-athletes are the Varsity Room athletic dining hall and Irwin Academic Center. “Irwin has a library, study rooms, and computer labs where we can work on assignments or receive tutoring.”

Dziedzic advises students who believe they have the drive and skill to play a college sport to “just go for it. Contact a coach about your interest. You never know what might happen.”

Mallory Gorman at an Illini Equestrians show

Matsen Dziedzic throws the weight in competition

I may not always compete, but I will always ride for fun.

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abe.illinois.edu4

If you’ve ever spent time in midwestern farm country during the growing season, you’ve probably heard the sound of an engine overhead right before a small plane swoops low over a field of corn or soybeans. You marvel at how low it flies, and you wonder at the spray it leaves in its wake. If you’re concerned, don’t be. Chances are good that the pilot has voluntarily attended an “Operation S.A.F.E. Fly-In” clinic to make sure the aerial application of pesticides is safe and efficient.

Scott Bretthauer, an extension specialist for pesticide safety and education in the Department of ABE, has conducted scores of these clinics across the Midwest and around the country. “S.A.F.E. stands for ‘self-regulating application and flight efficiency,’ ” said Bretthauer. “The clinic is a day-long event. Pilots bring their aircraft to an airfield, and we load a fluorescent dye into their spray tank. The aircraft is flown over a white cotton string and the pilot releases the dye. We analyze the string to see how much dye is collected, and we measure the droplet size as well. We want to make sure that the product is applied uniformly across the entire field.”

The “we” in Bretthauer’s conversations refers to Matt Gill, a graduate student in ABE. Gill has worked with Bretthauer since 2010, his freshman year of college, and Bretthauer said they make an efficient team.

“I like to analyze the aircraft and work on how the setup actually impacts the application,” Bretthauer said. “Matt’s interest lies in the equipment we use to do that analysis, and he’s made some significant improvements to a variety of the equipment we use.

“For instance,” said Bretthauer, “two of the parameters we

use in our evaluation of an aircraft’s aerial application are its altitude and speed. In the past, I used radar to determine an aircraft’s speed, and I had a laser that determined altitude. Matt put those two systems together and wrote an application for an Android table that allows them to communicate. That made measuring those parameters a lot easier.”

Gill has also made improvements to Bretthauer’s fluorometer, which measures the intensity of fluorescence in spray pattern analysis. “Our fluorometer is from the 1980s,” said Bretthauer. “They’re very expensive, which is one of the reasons we’ve never replaced it. Matt is working with Dick Whitney, a retired professor from Oklahoma State he met at one of our fly-in training classes. Whitney is building a new fluorometer, and Matt is writing a software program for it. It’s a great improvement over what we’ve had and will allow us to better analyze the spray patterns and keep track of the related information. He had been bugging me for two years to update the fluorometer. Now I wish I’d turned him loose on it a long time ago.”

After all the data is analyzed, Bretthauer goes over the information with each pilot, suggesting ways to improve application efficiency or discussing the most effective spray nozzle settings.

Bretthauer believes strongly in the importance of his work. “Agricultural aircraft across the United States apply roughly a quarter of all pesticides that are applied to both agricultural crops and forested areas. In the Midwest, they apply fungicides onto corn and insecticides to whatever insect pests might be a problem in a given year, and they’re also used to apply herbicides. Aerial application is critical to the country’s agriculture.”

Extension program helps make aerial spraying safe and efficient

Scott Bretthauer and Matt Gill discuss fly-in results using the fluorometer Gill recently reprogrammed

Maria Chu and Richard Cooke, both professors in soil and water resources engineering, are members of two research teams that have received significant funding from the USDA’s National Institute of Food and Agriculture (NIFA).

Maria Chu is the primary investigator on a four-year, $500,000 grant to study the nonmarket value of watershed management enhancements. The clean water that our rivers and lakes provide for domestic and agriculture use also supports basic ecological processes and economic services, including navigation, fisheries and recreational opportunities. Improvements in watershed management to enhance those services have been the focus of

conservation endeavors for many years. Chu and her team are going to determine the nonmarket value of those improvements in order to better understand the tradeoffs between market activities and the environmental decisions we make.

Amy Ando, a professor in Agricultural and Consumer Economics at Illinois, and Jason Knouft, a Saint Louis University professor in the Department of Biology, are co-PIs for the project.

The study is divided into two parts, said Chu. “I’ll be involved in the hydrologic assessment of the Upper Sangamon Watershed. We are going to use a suite of hydrologic and environmental models

to simulate different land management practices and their effects on three ecosystems services – water clarity, nutrient reduction and fish population,” she said. “For example, we will study how those ecosystem services will react to using tillage or no-till practices. What will happen to the sediment load in the rivers if we implement no-till? Will we see a reduction in nutrients? What will happen to the fish population?”

Chu said every land management scenario that is implemented will affect fish populations, so Knouft (an Illinois alumnus) will lead the study on fish-species richness. Ando, an experienced environmental economist, will take the results of their research and design a survey to determine the values people place on the ecosystem services that are improved.

“That survey will help us better understand how society perceives the conservation changes that the government is implementing,” said Chu. “First of all, are they aware of these changes? If so, are they concerned about them? Do they believe they will benefit from them? Do they understand, or believe, that changes that are made ‘upstream’ will affect them?”

In the long term, Chu said, this study will help experts make decisions about implementing and adapting mitigation practices and policies for sustainable agriculture, while continuing to support these important ecosystem services.

Maria Chu

CELEBR ATE

ABE professors receive major grant funding

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Richard Cooke is part of a 28-member multi-institutional, multidisciplinary research team that hopes to generate reliable, site-specific estimates of fertilizer application rates and timing that will optimize yield while minimizing fertilizer contamination.

This project is funded by a $4.5-million grant from NIFA; David Bullock, a professor in Agriculture and Consumer Economics, is the primary investigator. The team will use precision agriculture technology to run low-cost, large-scale field trials conducted by farmers during normal operations. The four-year project will include research that will be conducted on three Illinois farms in 2016 and three more in 2017, 2018 and 2019.

“The fields will be around 160 acres each,” said Cooke, “divided into smaller plots of around 30 acres, to study both corn and soybeans.” Cooke will work with Paul Davidson, another professor in soil and water, to apply different levels of fertilizer to the different sites, then analyze the impact of the fertilizer on water quality. “We’ll collect water samples from the tiles’ subsurface water and measure the nitrate, nitrogen and phosphorous levels to see how those are impacted by the different fertilizer rates as well as the cropping schemes, the soil types and the topography.”

Cooke said they will calibrate the information from these monitoring stations with international weather models that look at different carbon use scenarios to model the effect of climate change on these systems at midcentury and late century. “How will this affect the entire system, and how will it affect yield?”

The ability to use precision agriculture to collect “big data” was not available ten to fifteen years ago. At that time, it was only financially feasible to run trials on small plots, at a few locations, for a few years. Recent research has shown that it is possible to run large-scale agronomic field trials at very low cost by using GPS-based precision agriculture technology. With more data generated on how yields and water quality respond to variations in fertilizer management, it will be possible to provide

better fertilizer management advice to farmers, to the public and to policy makers. A supporting goal of the project is to train and place select underrepresented students in positions to improve agricultural research and agribusiness collaborations between the U.S. and Latin America.

Tony Grift and Luis Rodriguez, also professors in ABE, are part of the research team and will be working on other areas of the project.

ABE professors receive major grant funding

Richard Cook

Spring 2016 | ABE@Illinois | 7

Whether through a bird’s-eye view of New York City or an Amazon video boasting a new automated delivery system, we’ve all been exposed to the seemingly unlimited potential for drones, or unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs). Professor Lei Tian has been studying the use of UAVs in precision agricultural for more than a decade. Three recent projects outlined here are the work of Tian and graduate students Liujun Li and Adam Anderson.

Chemical application

One way to maximize production and minimize economic costs and environmental impacts in precision agriculture is to optimize chemical application. Variable rate technology has been widely and successfully utilized in large-scale field operations when applying herbicides, but it is still a challenge to apply chemicals according

to site-specific demands within small scale units using current commercial applicators. Tian and his students have modified a commercially available multi-rotor UAV with a spray system consisting of a controlled electric diaphragm pump supplying liquid to two flat-fan spray nozzles. The low-cost multi-rotor UAV has increased stability and is lightweight and relatively easy to operate. An experiment using this UAV was designed to test spray deposition and performance. The test was performed at the South Farms in Urbana, and the results indicated that the system provides a flexible and reliable platform for chemical application.

This study was conducted by Adam Anderson, Liujun Li, and Lei Tian of the Department of Agricultural and Biological Engineering and Hang Zhu of the School of Mechanical Science and Engineering, Jilin University, Changchun, China.

Lei Tian shows the first UAV developed and built in the Illinois Laboratory for Agricultural Remote Sensing

Tian’s research in UAVs continues to improve precision agriculture

RESE ARCH

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Weed control

Typically herbicides are applied uniformly to entire fields, rather than just to areas where they are most needed. Existing weed identification approaches – manual visual scouting or ground-based proximal sensing – are labor intensive and time consuming, and they do not scale easily to large areas. Tian and his students developed a UAV weed scout with a machine vision system that can identify weed infestations. “The original goal was to identify the weed species,” said Tian, “but that is quite difficult. You have to fly relatively low to see details, and it involves a lot of programming. We felt it would be more practical to identify which field area was infested, then generate a map the farmer could use to target that area.”

This study was conducted by Liujun Li, Youheng Fan and Lei Tian of the Department of Agricultural and Biological Engineering and Xiaoyun Huang of Beihang University, Beijing, China.

Precision cover crop management

Subsurface tile drainage systems are used to remove excess water from poorly drained agricultural fields. This improves the timeliness of field operations, enhances growing conditions for crop production and increases crop yields on poorly drained soils. However, these systems not only remove water, they also facilitate the movement of soil nutrients, including nitrogen and phosphorous, to surrounding waterways. This can degrade water quality, creating problems ranging from compromised local drinking water supplies to the hypoxic zone created in the Gulf of Mexico. Precision cover cropping uses precision technology to leverage a cover crop’s impact on crop development, yields and soil health and to adapt the cover cropping to field-specific needs or conditions. The adoption of cover cropping conservation practices can be improved by reducing risks, costs and operational concerns. Real-time UAV imagery provides an efficient way to estimate tile line location and performance and to characterize its effect on crop development and yield response. A soybean field in Monticello, Illinois, was remote-sensed in season and after harvesting by a multi-rotor UAV with visible and near-infrared sensors. The tile lines were detected by feature detection and edge enhancement, and GIS analysis for mapping tile lines was conducted. Soil data, hydrological parameters, elevation and vegetation cover were overlaid and combined to identify the layout of functional tile drainage systems. The crop growth and yield response were further analyzed and the accuracy of the method evaluated by comparison with ground truth data. The results show the method to be a promising and cost-effective tool for precision cover cropping.

This study was conducted at the University of Illinois by Liujun Li, Lei Tian and Richard Cooke of the Department of Agricultural and Biological Engineering; Jonathan Compess of the Department of Agricultural and Consumer Economics; Brent Trenhaile and Heather Filippini of the Applied Research Institute; and Scott Wilkin of the Applied Research Institute and the National Center for Supercomputing Applications.

Tian’s graduate student Adam Anderson is building a UAV from scratch to test a guidance system he hopes to develop for the larger sprayer UAV. Anderson said most UAVs use prefabricated flight control systems to set up the basic flight parameters, connect a controller and fly the UAV. Anderson will instead program his own system on a single-board computer called a pcDuino3. He will then connect a camera to the pcDuino3 and use its GPU (graphics processing unit) to perform onboard image processing. He hopes to implement a row guidance algorithm that essentially allows the UAV to “see” and follow crop rows while its height and speed are maintained using inputs from sensors and the camera.

From the ground. . . up

Spring 2016 | ABE@Illinois | 9

You share a lot with your siblings. Hand-me-down clothes. Vacation memories. Those awkward family photos. And if you’re lucky, you also share having a degree from the Department of Agricultural and Biological Engineering.

Stephen Anderson and Luke Anderson

Stephen Anderson received both bachelor’s (2007) and master’s (2010) degrees in agricultural and biological engineering. Luke received a bachelor’s in technical systems management in 2013. As an undergraduate, Stephen was involved in the Fountain Wars competition and was later a member of Alpha Epsilon Society. Luke was involved in off-campus Christian groups and was a four-year member of the Illini Pullers.

Stephen began his career with the Natural Resources Conservation Service, but today the brothers work with their father, an Illinois agricultural economics graduate, on the family farm near Stewardson, Illinois. They have started a company together, Water Management Solutions, LLC.

“The scope of our company is to install and repair drainage, do conservation work and planning, and do soil and water engineering,” said Luke. “Stephen has a great deal of education and experience working in this field; he’s the driving force behind the company’s planning and engineering. I’m much more of a handyman, so I keep our machinery going and try to implement updates and new designs that help improve efficiency and productivity.”

“We saw the need for tile on our own farm when we had wet spring after wet spring post-2007,” said Stephen. “Working for NRCS across the state, I saw the immense demand for land improvements that farmers were making. And our dad always had a farm financial consulting business, so we were familiar with the requirements of having a business complementary to our family farm.”

Both men stress the enjoyment they get working with family. “We all butt heads some, but it’s great to be your

own boss,” Luke said. “Knowing that we’re working to further our family farm is very humbling.”

Matt Wilhelmi and Chris Wilhelmi

The Wilhelmi brothers love their jobs, and they are great examples of just how diverse degrees in ag and bio engineering can be. Matt received his bachelor’s degree in 2007, with a concentration in off-road equipment engineering. He is a senior research and development engineer with Kinze Manufacturing, Inc., in Williamsburg, Iowa. “I love agriculture. Farming runs through my veins,” he said, “but I also love mechanics and how things work. As an ag engineer, I get the thrill of designing game-changing technologies in a field that means so much to me. There’s nothing better than going back home to Illinois and seeing my design in the field being operated by neighbors and friends.”

All in the family

Luke and Stephen Anderson work together at their family farm

Matt, left, and Chris Wilhelmi after a successful fishing trip

ALUMNI SP OTLIGHT

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Chris went the route of food and biological processing. He received a bachelor’s degree in 2012 and a master’s in 2014. As a self-proclaimed “avid home brewer and beer snob,” he knew his dream job when he saw it. “Brewing is what allowed me to immediately recognize my future employer and position when it appeared on I-Link,” he said. Chris is one of four production managers at Rahr Malting Company in Shakopee, Minnesota. In addition to the day-to-day responsibilities of managing the facility, Chris said, “I’m becoming a seasoned tour guide. As the number of craft brewers who use our product grows, we have a lot of groups approaching us for tours. Now every other Thursday is a dedicated tour day. If I’m not too busy I volunteer to help show these people our process and answer any questions they might have. I really enjoy being an ambassador in that way and meeting people from different industries and the brewing industry itself.”

Matt said the brothers travel together several times a year on fishing trips. “In the spring we go to Michigan, and in the winter we go to North Dakota to ice fish.”

Chris said they will regularly call one another, especially if one of them has a particular problem that needs solving. “If it’s work related, being able to pick a brain completely removed from the process can be informative and refreshing. And we visit each other on occasion, especially if one of us needs a hand – or the fish are really biting.”

Dan Williams and Jessica Williams

The Williams siblings come from a family of engineers – all Illinois graduates – spread across the country, from California to the District of Columbia. Both Dan and Jessica have degrees in ag and bio engineering. Dan received a bachelor’s degree in 2011 and a master’s degree in 2013. Jessica received a bachelor’s in 2013. Today Dan lives in Illinois and works for Monsanto as a field automation engineer. Jessica lives in North Carolina and works at Cook Medical as a quality engineer.

“Jess is two years younger than me,” said Dan, “and since I went for a master’s, I spent four years with her at Illinois. It was great grabbing dinner with her at the dining hall every now and then.”

As for Jessica, “I always found it to be an advantage having an older sibling in my major,” she said. “Dan was able to share some of his experiences that gave me insight into what was ahead. And with the common last name of Williams, very few assumed we were siblings, so I avoided having professors know me as Dan’s little sister, outside of the few who knew both of us well.”

“I would share everything that I remembered

about classes,” Dan said, “and I tried to get her to think about which discipline she wanted to go into. I felt this was huge since there are many disciplines in ABE, and some discipline-specific classes are taken in the first two years.”

Jessica appreciated the input. “His opinions on what classes to take and what he found useful were very valuable. He helped me begin thinking about my future goals very early on in my education.”

Having family members spread across the country means time together is limited, Jessica said, but “we’re lucky enough to travel together fairly often to see our whole family. It’s always great to catch up and hear about what’s going on in Dan’s life.”

Dan agreed: “We still manage to see each other a few times a year, and it’s always fun.”

Siblings Dan and Jessica Williams at their graduation in 2013

I found it an advantage having an older sibling in my major.

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Spring 2016 | ABE@Illinois | 11

Helping freshmen navigate a year of changeABE 100 is a freshman’s first experience as a student in the agricultural and biological engineering program. Angela Green, an assistant professor in ABE and the instructor for the course, strives to make it a meaningful one.

“The first goal,” said Green, “is to expose new students to the different applications and opportunities they have in agricultural and biological engineering. A second goal is to help students develop skills that they won’t address directly in other classes, things like

team building, conflict resolution and professional communication. Employers tell us these are skills students need, but don’t often have when they graduate.

“Finally,” said Green, “we want to help them build relationships with their fellow students in ABE and get to know the department. The sooner we can get them connected to ABE and their peers, the better they’ll do here at Illinois.”

The first six weeks of the course are devoted to a video project. “In the past, I’ve asked faculty to suggest topics,” said Green, “but this year I had the students give me topics that interested them. It worked really well. Because they proposed the topics, they were engaged early.”

The video project is focused on seeking and distilling information. “They don’t have to solve a problem,” said Green, “they have to inform their audience about our current understanding of a problem. That’s where problem-solving begins.” Students learn how to identify credible sources to research a topic, and they work in teams of three or four to produce the video. This year’s topics ranged from environmental control in chicken barns (Team Cluck Club) to the fate of chemicals used in agriculture (Agricultural Waste Organization) to a proposed system of growing crops in urban areas using specially designed skyscrapers (Space Farms).

After the videos are produced, each team does a peer review. Green has added another dimension to the project. She coordinates with professors from universities in Ireland, Italy and Greece who are conducting similar video projects. Each team in ABE100 peer reviews a video from their class as well as a video from one of the other universities. In turn, the international students review the videos in ABE 100.

“The students not only learn how to relay information to people with a similar background, they have to think about how to relay that same information to someone from a different culture who might not speak English as their first language,” said Green. “It really broadens the way they think about how to communicate information.” Videos can be viewed online at http://bit.ly/ABE100UIUC.

The last half of the semester is devoted to the challenge project. Students work on a new team with a new topic, and they are mentored by faculty members who suggest projects often based on on-going research in the department. Students conduct their research and present their findings in a poster

Professor Angela Green

ABE 100

abe.illinois.edu12

competition and oral presentations. Some of this year’s topics included the thermal comfort of pigs, assessing agricultural fatality in Illinois, and the implementation of robots in agriculture. The final posters are available for viewing on the first floor of the Agricultural Engineering Sciences Building.

Because freshmen don’t yet have the engineering background they’ll have later in their academic careers, Green tries to keep the projects simple yet meaningful. She also believes that learning how a team functions is key to the students’ success, in class and in their career.

“I think students are surprised when they learn that a significant portion of their grade is based on how well they’re able to assess how their team functioned. If their project has a failure, it doesn’t necessarily decrease their grade,” she said. “How well they assess it and respond to it are more important skills to learn right now. I always stress to them that when you get to the workplace, if your team falls apart, it’s your job on the line. So how well they work together to work through problems is important. It’s probably the only time in their university career that having a failure doesn’t tank their grade,” she said with a laugh. “They have the opportunity to fail in order to learn.”

Green said working with freshman is a challenge, but one she enjoys. “They come in with so much enthusiasm and energy. They’re ready to conquer the world. Still, that first semester is really hard for them. It’s a semester of change, and they are being pushed to their limits. Hopefully, in ABE 100 we’re helping them build a support network for dealing with that change.”

The body and wheels of the Agrobot were 3-D printed, then assembled with an Arduino board, servo motors, and an ultrasonic sensor

The winner of the ABE 100 poster competition was Team Agricultural Robotics Association (Young Cheol Huh, Austin Green, Christopher Umeki and Daniela Markazi). The team designed, programmed, and built a robot that was able to detect objects in its path and find its way through a confined area.

A technical drawing of the Agrobot (above) modeled on Autodesk Inventor

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Department of Agricultural & Biological Engineering338 Agricultural Engineering Sciences Building1304 W. Pennsylvania AvenueUrbana, IL 61801

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Pond used to study erosion control at the ABE research farm.

We want your feedback about ABE@Illinois. Please send your comments to Leanne Lucas at llucas@illinois.edu.