Iris (Xiaoyu) Feng has joined the NDSU Department of Agricultural and Biosystems Engineering as an assistant professor.
“The world is facing a growing population, accelerating food shortages, rising greenhouse gas emission levels and increasing risks of water and soil contamination. A sustainable environment and precision agriculture is needed more today than it has ever been,” she said. “My motivation for research is in obtaining a better understanding of the relationship between agricultural activities and soil health and other environmental impacts.”
Feng’s bachelor’s and master’s degrees are in environmental engineering with research experience related to wastewater treatment and biofuel production. She earned her doctorate at Purdue University in the Department of Agricultural and Biological Engineering, where her research focused on the model development of indoor environmental control systems for livestock based on statistic, mathematic, mechanistic and thermodynamic principles.
Her experience since completing her doctorate includes working at the University of California-Davis and University of Wisconsin-Madison as a research associate. Her postdoctoral research interests have focused on smart farming, such as assessing environmental and economic impacts of manure treatment processes, investigating the effects of supplementing feed additives on greenhouse gas emissions in dairy and beef cattle, and utilizing innovative sensing techniques to analyze nutrient concentrations and improve precision agriculture and environmental sustainability.
She worked at Engineering Consulting Services Southeast as an intern for six months during her master’s degree work, and collaborated with scientists at Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada to assess the environmental impact of new technologies for managing livestock waste.
During the fall semester, she will teach Bioenvironmental Systems Design and the 391 Seminar. In the spring, she will teach Management of Agricultural Systems and Structures and Environmental Systems.
“Teaching and conducting research are lifelong processes, where you learn new strategies, new ideas and new philosophies, and this is the most attractive part for me of being a faculty member,” she said. “For my future research interests and long-term goals at NDSU, I plan to focus on developing controlled environmental systems in agriculture with integrating remote sensing, energy efficiency, air quality, GHG emission and cost benefits topics.”
As a student-focused, land-grant, research university, we serve our citizens.
