Dr. Dong Chen
Assistant Professor
Agricultural & Biological Engineering
Mississippi State University
Phone: 662-325-8279
Email: dc2528 at msstate dot edu
About me
Hello! I am a tenure-track assistant professor of Agricultural and Biological Engineering at Mississippi State University (MSU) starting in Fall 2024. Before coming to MSU, I served as a Postdoc Fellow at the University of Virginia (UVA), affiliated with both the Environmental Institute and Link Lab mentored by Drs. Arsalan Heydarian and Brad Campbell. I earned my Ph.D. in Electrical and Computer Engineering from Michigan State University in 2023, guided by Dr. Zhaojian Li. Before that, I obtained my B.Eng. degree from the Department of Mechanical Engineering, University of Electronic Science and Technology of China (UESTC) in June 2017.
Research Interests: My research focuses on advancing AI-driven agricultural systems by integrating machine learning, robotics, and domain knowledge to enable efficient, adaptable, and intelligent decision-making in real-world farming environments.
Research Projects
1. Soft Robotic Systems for Delicate Fruit Harvesting
Delicate fruits such as strawberries are highly susceptible to bruising and damage during conventional harvesting. This project aims to develop soft robotic systems with compliant end-effectors, integrated sensing, and AI-based control strategies to enable gentle, selective, and efficient harvesting of fragile fruits in dynamic field environments.
Leading student: Moeen Ul Islam — soft robot design and system integration
Leading student: Cheng Ouyang — data-driven control
News
- Funding! 07/2025: We received two awards to support undergraduate research — the BCoE Undergraduate Student Research Award ($2,500) and the ORED Undergraduate Research Program ($2,000). Congratulations to Piyush! 🎉
- Lab Updates! 07/2025: Welcome Linyuan Wang and Bishal Adhikari as new PhD students in our lab!
- News! 06/2025: Excited to be invited to join the USDA NIFA Panel!
- Funding! 03/2025: Our proposal, “Soybean Weed Management Through AI and Automation,” has been awarded by the Mississippi Soybean Promotion Board (MSPB)! 🎉
- Lab Updates! 01/2025: Welcome Ouyang and Moeen as new PhD students in our lab!
- Life Updates! 10/2024: Starting as a tenure-track assistant professor at Mississippi State University
- Invited Talks! 07/2024: I co-taught a CPD course on “Large Language Models and Foundation Models in Agriculture: Bridging Theory and Practice” at the 2024 ASABE Annual International Meeting
- New Papers! 06/2024. Our papers on soft robot control have been accepted by IEEE TMECH and RAL
- New Papers! 03/2024. “SoybeanNet for soybean pod counting” has been accepted by COMPAG [Paper] [Dataset] [Codes]
- New Papers! 02/2024. “MARL for CACC” has been accepted by IEEE TIV [Paper] [Codes]
- New Papers! 12/2023. “Diffusion models for agriculture image generation” has been accepted by COMPAG [Paper] [Codes]
- New Papers! 11/2023. “Label-efficient Learning in Agriculture” has been accepted by COMPAG [Paper] [Codes]
- New Papers! 11/2023. “Event-trigger MPC” has been accepted by T-IV [Paper] [Codes]
- Invited Talks! 09/2023. I gave an invited talk on “Communication-Efficient Decentralized MARL for CACC” at 2023 IEEE ITSC.
- Awards! 08/2023. I am glad to receive the Presentation Excellence Award at the ASABE’s 2023 Annual International Meeting
- Life Updates! 07/2023. I have successfully defended the Ph.D. dissertation. Now, officially Dr. Chen!
- Awards! 07/2023. Our paper on “Diffusion Model For Weed Recognition Enhancement” won the ITSC Technical Community Meeting Paper Awards.
- New Papers! 05/2023. Our paper on “Deep MARL for highway on-ramp merging in mixed traffic” has been accepted by T-ITS [Paper] [Codes]