Zombies, AI, and the Diseases that Keep Plant Pathologists Awake at Night

In this episode, Dr. David Hughes, Dorothy Foehr Huck & J. Lloyd Huck Chair in Global Food Security and Professor of Biology and Entomology at The Pennsylvania State University joins host Matt Kasson to discuss his 2-part career, first working on behavioral ecology of zombifying fungi and then transitioning to work on current and emerging threats to crops. He talks at length about PlantVillage, an AI-first platform he founded for helping smallholder farmers cope with pests and climate change. He also talks about the different AI-based applications he and other scientists use and rely on and emphasizes the importance of discovery and hard work in our increasingly AI-dominated work environments.

Show Notes

Dr. David Hughes’ Penn State faculty webpage: https://ento.psu.edu/directory/dph14

Plant Village website: https://plantvillage.psu.edu/

Dr. David Hughes’ Google Scholar profile: https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=9kgD3pQAAAAJ&hl=en

Dr. David Hughes’ FAST Company Most Innovative in Business profile: https://www.fastcompany.com/90651745/most-creative-people-2021-david-hughes

This episode is produced by Association Briefings.