Synopsis

Associate Professor Girish Chowdhary is a computer science specialist at the University of Illinois.  His academics career and interest in robotics comes with a real-world orientation, so he turned his expertise in automation to reducing the uncomfortable, labour intensive jobs in agriculture.  The company Girish co-founded, EarthSense, developed its technology to meet the needs of plant breeders, creating robots that can quickly, accurately, and automatously collect phenotyping data in plot trials. 

He talks about the differences he sees as he moves back & forth between academic and startup life, and why he encourages his students to push their work to more concrete outcomes than the proof points required for an academic publication.