Ajay Sharda is now the Director of Research at the Institute for Digital Ag and Advanced Analytics and a Professor in Biological and Agricultural Engineering at Kansas State University. Dr. Sharda received his MS in Farm Machinery and Power from Punjab Agricultural University, Ludhiana (1999-2001), and a PhD in Precision Ag/Machine Systems from Auburn University (2007-2011). He was an Assistant Professor for the design, development, and testing of agricultural machinery, undergraduate teaching, and extension activities at Punjab Agricultural University, Ludhiana (2003-2012). Next, he worked as a Post Doctoral Research Associate at the Washington State University Center for Precision and Automated Agricultural Systems on Precision technologies for specialty crops. Dr. Sharda has been working at Kansas State University since 2013. In 2016, he earned the Precision Ag Researcher of 2016 award from National Conservation Systems and the Engineer of the Year award from the Kansas Section American Society of Agricultural and Biological Engineers. His research topics mainly include automation, mechatronic systems, computer vision systems, artificial intelligence, autonomous systems, data science, and thermal infrared remote sensing.
