Alec Pirone ’24
Civil and Environmental Engineering
Farm Project Field Assistant
Certificate(s): Applied and Computational Mathematics
As the population of the Earth increases rapidly, we are required to find ways to increase the amount of food that we are producing through agriculture. We collected data from various farms to determine the efficacy of various farming methods. Our data collection was part of a multiyear project that involved using Arable sensors, devices that provide measures of plant health, temperature, precipitation, and more. We also took measurements of vegetation on a cattle farm to determine the extent to which a certain soil amendment improves vegetation growth; this amendment may help us optimize the production of beef by reducing the amount of land needed for its production. We also used a drone to fly over the fields and collect data on overall plant health. I learned to use a statistical software called JMP to produce graphs of plant growth over time, while also considering factors such as rainfall and temperature. This internship made it clear to me that I am interested in conservation and sustainability related to food production, and I hope to study this further in the future.
2022
Sustainable Food Systems
Rubenstein Lab, Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Princeton University - Princeton, New Jersey
Daniel Rubenstein, Class of 1877 Professor of Zoology, Professor of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology; Gina Talt, Food Systems Project Specialist, Office of Sustainability