May 22, 2025
Faculty and Staff congratulate our Spring 2025 Graduates
May 21, 2025
Since 2012, the Student Sustainability Advisory Council recognizes a Penn State University Park student every spring semester, for their overall leadership in sustainability initiatives and for making a difference in the campus community. This year’s 2025 SSAC Tree Award recipient is agricultural engineering student Gavin Maxson.
April 29, 2025
Students from across the University are being honored for their extraordinary contributions to sustainability initiatives.
April 29, 2025
Graduate students in Penn State’s College of Agricultural Sciences were recognized for their accomplishments during the 2025 Graduate Student Award Celebration, hosted by the Office for Research and Graduate Education and held recently on the University Park campus.
April 16, 2025
Held in State College, the “Pennsylvania AgForum: Taking Action Together for Our Agricultural Community” brought together stakeholders in agriculture, health care, finance, mental health, child care and government. Hosted by Penn State Extension, the event was aimed at building partnerships across sectors to address the financial and mental health challenges in the farming community.
April 3, 2025
Suat Irmak, professor and head of agricultural and biological engineering in the College of Agricultural Sciences, has been elected to the latest cohort of fellows of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, the world’s largest general scientific society and publisher of the journal Science.
April 2, 2025
Penn State students interested in agricultural conservation will have a new opportunity to gain hands-on experience in fall 2025. The College of Agricultural Sciences’ Department of Agricultural and Biological Engineering is launching “ABSM 497-002: Ag structures: conservation,” a course designed to equip students with the technical knowledge and skills to identify and plan conservation structures on farms.
April 2, 2025
At the intersection of technology and agriculture, Penn State’s Agribot Club in the College of Agricultural Sciences aims to shape the future of farming through robotics.
March 27, 2025
Four Penn State faculty members have been elected to the most recent cohort of fellows of the American Association for the Advancement of Science.
March 26, 2025
Landis Crawford, a Schreyer Scholar and agricultural engineering major, has developed a passion for agricultural leadership from Penn State Behrend to University Park.
February 27, 2025
Soilless growing systems inside greenhouses, known as controlled environment agriculture, promise to advance the year-round production of high-quality specialty crops, according to an interdisciplinary research team at Penn State. But to be competitive and sustainable, this advanced farming method will require the development and implementation of precision agriculture techniques. To meet that demand, the team developed an automated crop-monitoring system capable of providing continuous and frequent data about plant growth and needs, allowing for informed crop management.
February 4, 2025
Raymond Yan, a fourth-year agricultural and biorenewable systems management student in Penn State’s College of Agricultural Sciences, represented the University at the January 2025 Farm Foundation Round Table in North Carolina. Yan, one of six students from across the country selected as a "cultivator" by the nonprofit organization Farm Foundation, presented research covering various multidisciplinary projects focusing on food system innovation.
January 27, 2025
The Institute of Energy and the Environment presented awards to six Penn State faculty members for their collaborative, interdisciplinary research efforts and mentorship.
January 9, 2025
Emily Stapleton, a first-year agricultural and biorenewable systems management major in Penn State’s College of Agricultural Sciences, is working toward a career in sustainable food production. At Penn State, she’s found a place to pursue her academic interests and love of competitive cycling.
January 6, 2025
Faculty and Staff congratulate our Fall 2024 Graduates
December 12, 2024
Mental health challenges are a significant and growing concern for the nation’s farmers, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture. As much as farming is often a family affair, programs and resources to support mental health in agriculture have focused on the primary producers, of whom nearly 64% are men. Women have always played a crucial role in agriculture, yet, Penn State Associate Professor Florence Becot said, their mental health and well-being — much like their essential contributions to agriculture — largely have been overlooked.
December 10, 2024
Penn State’s College of Agricultural Sciences celebrated another year of outstanding success and accomplishments in research during the 2024 Research Awards Ceremony, held Nov. 19 at the Hintz Family Alumni Center on the University Park campus.
December 9, 2024
Dr. Cibin Raj and his co-authors recently received the High-Impact Research Publication Award Ceremony that was held at the Hintz Alumni Center.
December 6, 2024
Three faculty members in Penn State’s College of Agricultural Sciences recently were recognized for their exemplary work in teaching as recipients of the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s 2024 National Teaching Awards for Food and Agricultural Sciences.
December 2, 2024
A delegation of Penn State faculty and graduate students who attended the 2024 United Nations Biodiversity Conference, known as COP16, in Cali, Colombia, share about the event and their experiences.
November 27, 2024
The Sustainable Communities Collaborative (SCC) at Penn State Sustainability has coordinated a record number of partnership projects with the Borough of State College this semester. The SCC pairs Penn State classes from across disciplines with communities on partner-identified and defined community projects.
November 26, 2024
Able to store carbon to offset emissions and prevent soil degradation and pollution, charcoal-like biochar could offer a sustainable solution to a lot of environmental challenges — if its production can be made greener. Supported by a three-year, $799,883 grant from the U.S. Department of Agriculture National Institute of Food and Agriculture, an international team led by researchers at Penn State will address the so-called “dark side” of biochar, assessing the threat of organic contaminant residues in biorefinery char products.
November 22, 2024
Pollutants known as “contaminants of emerging concern” or chemicals that could potentially harm human health and have been found in the environment, including pesticides, ingredients from personal care products, pharmaceuticals and perfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS), are increasingly found in streams and lakes. A team led by researchers at Penn State recently demonstrated the accuracy and utility of a new method to find even very low levels of these substances in surface waters. They reported their findings in the Science of the Total Environment.
November 21, 2024
October 29, 2024
This is a full-time non-academic staff (Lab Coordinator-Engineering-Intermediate Professional) position.
October 25, 2024
One of the most traditionally time-consuming, labor-intensive processes of apple production is blossom thinning, which involves manually pruning flowers so that remaining blooms can reclaim the plant’s resources to grow better fruit. More recently, the process has shifted to broad chemical spraying, which can have harmful environmental impacts. To assist producers and mitigate environmental harm, the USDA has awarded a three-year, $601,125 grant to a team of Penn State researchers for the development of a robotic precision spraying system.
October 9, 2024
Two faculty members in Penn State’s College of Agricultural Sciences, Ali Demirci and Juliana Vasco-Correa, recently received awards from the American Society of Agricultural and Biological Engineers.
September 12, 2024
Nine Penn State researchers have been named fellows of the Institute of Energy and the Environment for 2024. The program recognizes and assists the exceptional achievements and unparalleled research impacts of highly successful researchers in the areas of energy and the environment. Nominees for the fellowship were submitted by the University community.
August 26, 2024
Nitrate, a common chemical compound that occurs naturally and is found in plants, water and soil, can break down into molecules harmful to human, animal and ecological health and accumulate as a pollutant. Nitrate contamination in streams, lakes and estuaries is a critical problem in many agricultural watersheds, but water-quality data is limited, making monitoring stream health and making management decisions difficult, according to researchers at Penn State. To enhance available data, the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) has awarded a four-year, $650,000 grant to a research team at Penn State.
August 21, 2024
Pesticides reduce crop loss, helping to stabilize production, but excessive use of pesticides has brought huge negative impacts to the environment and human health, according to the Environmental Protection Agency. To address the problem, a team of Penn State researchers is developing a robotic precision pesticide sprayer capable of targeted application while minimizing unintended exposure.
