A Day in the Life of a Researcher – Sundaresan Venkatesan

Sundaresan Venkatesan joined the Walton team one year ago as Research Software Engineer. We asked Sundaresan to describe what it is like working at Walton and on the DEMETER project.

How long have you been at Walton?

1 year

Previous Experience

Before joining Walton Institute as a researcher, I had 10+ years’ experience in Software Development, and had worked in areas such as Embedded Systems, Virtualization, Android, Airline, and Cybersecurity.

Outline your day to day

Each day is spent learning new skills and technology. I spend my time analysing, designing, developing and deploying software components. Every day is new and very much a learning experience.

How and why you got into research

Throughout my life, I have learned that ultimate happiness is obtained not only through hard work and intelligence, but also by being brave in pursuing my dreams. It is my immense desire for learning and invention that directed me to a career in research, which I firmly see as the crucial connection between my past achievements and my future. Research is an opportunity to make important discoveries in my field of interest. For me, research is not just about new discoveries, but also taking existing solutions and learning to improvise.

Briefly outline the research projects you are working on

I currently work on the DEMETER project, which aims to put digital means at the service of farmers. DEMETER is a large-scale deployment of farmer-driven, interoperable smart farming-IoT (Internet of Things) based platforms, delivered through a series of pilots across 18+ countries. We adopt a multi-actor approach across the value chain (demand and supply).

What areas do you see yourself working on in the future

Cloud, Data Science, Artificial Intelligence (AI), Machine Learning. I am intrigued by various applications of AI in fields like Farming, Sustainable Energy Engineering, and its potential to help reduce the negative impact on our natural environment.

The big and little wins, anything you have learned

The last 6 months in my career as a researcher have been interesting. It has been challenging, but I really like what I am doing, taking theoretical and experimental knowledge and applying it to practical solutions.

A big win for me as a researcher is the opportunity to be a product owner.  This role allows me to acquire new knowledge and lead to useful discoveries or solve practical problems.

The challenging and enjoyable aspects of being a researcher in your field

I enjoy all aspects of my work, from basic research work to strategic and applied research. I like building new solutions to solve practical problems. I enjoy acquiring new knowledge which can lead to useful discoveries. And I enjoy determining new ways of achieving specific objectives or developing new techniques.

Outline why your research is necessary

One of the key benefits of the DEMETER project is the launch of DEMETER Stakeholder Open Collaboration Space (SOCS). SOCS enables knowledge sharing and co-creation where farmers/ service advisors express their needs and service advisors and providers team-up to define the most appropriate combination tools. For technical providers, all registered resources are made available to developers through the DEMETER Enabler Hub (DEH) to guide the deployment based on capabilities (or constraints) of adopted technologies as well as ownership of resources factors.

The project will also:

• Develop an Agricultural interoperability space, enabling knowledge sharing and co-creation.
• Demonstrate an efficient, integrated management of water and energy, from sources to end users to optimize both the quality and quantity of the resources in irrigation systems applied to irrigated.
• Highlight the benefits of Precision farming.
• Support farmers in protecting the health and the quality of production of crops.
• Support farmers for livestock animal health and high-quality production.
• Explain how AI-based prediction and decision support tools can benefit animal health and animal products.
• Enable validation of the interoperability of platforms and solutions used in different sectors as well as to validate interoperability of platforms used for management of on-farm and post-farm (supply chain) activities.

How will it improve the current state

DEMETER project goal is to lead the digital transformation of Europe’s agri-food sector through the rapid adoption of advanced IoT technologies, data science and smart farming, ensuring its long-term viability and sustainability.

The project seeks to create a secure and sustainable European IoT Technology and business ecosystem.  DEMETER will demonstrate the real-life potential of advanced, standards-based, interoperability between IoT technology by adapting and extending existing standards into an overarching Agricultural Information model.

When will it be implemented

This project is in the pilot phase, running until 2023, delivering software solutions as a service incrementally. 

What are the real-world implications

Our key objective is to put digital means at the service of farmers and to empower farmers and farmer cooperatives to use their existing platforms and machinery to extract new knowledge to improve their decision making, and to ease the acquisition, evolution and updating of their platforms, machinery and sensors by focusing their investments where these are needed.