Lie Tang, professor in agricultural and biosystems engineering, is the recipient of the Outstanding Achievement in Research Award from the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences at Iowa State University. His research in the area of agricultural automation and robotics for acquiring crop plant information for autonomous field operations and plant phenotyping is well known nationally and internationally and has made a major impact in the agricultural engineering discipline. Some of the most challenging aspects are associated with the fact that crop plants are biological with all the variability and uncertainty associated with living organisms. Tang’s research group has been relentless in pursuing practical, real-world innovations to unlock the technology for agricultural plant sensing and the associated robotic automation that must be co-developed to implement practical solutions.
Tang is active in serving the university and his profession as well, including the steering committee for the Iowa State Enviratron facility and several committees within the American Society of Agricultural and Biological Engineers. He has also served as president of the Association of Overseas Chinese Agricultural, Food and Biological Engineers.