Cy4CEA is giving Iowa State students hands-on experience where engineering, artificial intelligence, cybersecurity, and horticulture come together to solve agriculture's next generation of challenges.
College students spend countless hours preparing for careers they'll eventually enter.
At Iowa State University's Cy4CEA initiative, many are already doing the work.
Inside the controlled environment agriculture facility, students from transportation engineering, cybersecurity, computer engineering, mechanical engineering, horticulture and artificial intelligence aren't simply completing assignments. They're designing robotics systems, programming sensors, building web applications, monitoring crops and solving problems that don't yet have established solutions.
It's an experience that looks far more like the modern workplace than a traditional classroom.
"Students are not just learning one thing," says Anuj Sharma, professor of civil engineering and one of Cy4CEA's founders. "They're learning how to work with people from completely different disciplines to solve complex problems."
That multidisciplinary environment has become one of Cy4CEA's defining strengths.
Rather than working within individual departments, students with vastly different interests are discovering how their expertise fits into a much larger picture.
Cy4CEA also connects students to Iowa State's broader AI-for-agriculture ecosystem. The initiative is supported by the Translational AI Center (TrAC), leveraging the technical expertise, computing infrastructure and deployment pathways TrAC has developed to move agricultural AI from research into practice.
"Students are learning to work across the full innovation pipeline—from sensing and plant phenotyping to AI, robotics and deployable tools," says Baskar Ganapathysubramanian, distinguished professor of mechanical engineering, director of the AI Institute for Resilient Agriculture (AIIRA) and a founding associate director of TrAC, who helps lead Cy4CEA's AI and engineering integration. "That combination of disciplinary depth and collaborative experience is exactly what the future AgTech workforce will require."
Four Different Paths, One Project
For Penny Mayer, a computer engineering student with a minor in horticulture, Cy4CEA offered something she hadn't expected to find during her senior design project.
"I really like being able to combine the two," she says.
Mayer develops the embedded systems that collect sensor data throughout the hydroponic facility and send information to the network for analysis. The project allows her to merge her technical background with a longtime interest in plants—two passions she once viewed as entirely separate.
"It's cool to be able to combine two disparate interests in this way and flex both of those muscles," Mayer says. "I also just think plants are neat, but I have more skills with computers, so it's nice to be able to use those skills to advance a different field."
The experience is already shaping her career goals.
"This is very valuable," she says of the project. "This would be a very good résumé piece for those kinds of jobs."
Just a few feet away, Charles Zulk is tackling a completely different challenge.
As a senior studying cybersecurity engineering, Zulk is helping develop the digital infrastructure that allows users to remotely monitor and manage hydroponic growing systems.
His team's goal is to create an automated platform where growers can log into a web application, monitor environmental conditions, review plant images, and track everything from nutrient levels to water flow.
"I found this project to be quite interesting," Zulk says. "I like working more with my hands, even though I am cybersecurity. I like both aspects, but just the aspect of doing something physical while also working toward the security aspect—I found it interesting as well."
Looking back on his freshman year, he never imagined cybersecurity would lead him into a hydroponic greenhouse.
"I wouldn't even have guessed something like this would have existed at Iowa State as a cybersecurity major," Zulk says. "Seeing something like this is really impressive."
Building Real-World Solutions
Graduate student Anush Sivaraman brings yet another perspective.
Although pursuing a master's degree in mechanical engineering, his expertise centers on robotics and computer vision.
His work focuses on developing systems capable of remotely monitoring crops, identifying discoloration, detecting disease, and collecting plant health data without requiring constant human observation.
The controlled environment presents engineering challenges unlike anything found in a textbook.
Drones must navigate tight spaces.
Robotics systems must operate safely around living plants.
Computer vision algorithms must distinguish subtle changes in leaf color and plant health.
Rather than viewing those constraints as obstacles, Sivaraman sees them as opportunities.
"I've been a researcher for as long as I can remember," he says. "The part that I love is breaking it down into small chunks and then building it back up."
More importantly, he says the project demonstrates the difference between classroom learning and practical engineering.
"Learning theory is one thing," Sivaraman says, "but building actual real-world solutions is another thing."
That lesson extends beyond robotics.
Working inside Cy4CEA has reinforced the value of persistence and experimentation.
"In the real world," he says, "you don't need to succeed on the first try. You can fail. You can succeed a little bit. You can fail again. You can succeed a little bit."
Learning From One Another
For transportation engineering doctoral student Sudesh Bhagat, Cy4CEA represented unfamiliar territory from the very beginning.
"I had not worked in horticulture or agriculture in the past," he says. "This is my first experience."
Today, Bhagat helps coordinate multiple projects throughout the facility, working alongside students from different disciplines while helping newer participants understand how their individual contributions fit together.
"It's a two-way learning process," he says. "I'm learning from the new generation... and from my experience, I help them understand why these systems are important."
He also sees the broader implications of the work taking place inside the greenhouse.
Automation, he believes, can help agriculture respond to labor shortages, climate variability and food insecurity while creating more resilient production systems.
"When there is food scarcity," Bhagat says, "you can use these kinds of systems to grow different plants or microgreens that would be easily distributed among people."
Preparing Tomorrow's Workforce
Although each student contributes different expertise, their projects ultimately intersect.
Computer engineers build sensor networks.
Cybersecurity students protect connected systems.
Mechanical engineers develop robotics.
Transportation engineers coordinate complex projects and systems.
Horticulture students ensure the plants themselves remain at the center of every technological advancement.
It's exactly the collaborative environment Sharma hoped to create.
"It's not just one department solving one problem," he says. "The future is multidisciplinary."
That philosophy extends well beyond Cy4CEA itself.
Faculty envision additional industry partnerships, expanded research opportunities and new projects that continue bringing students from different colleges together to solve agriculture's biggest challenges.
For the students already involved, however, the impact is immediate. They're graduating with far more than classroom knowledge. They're learning to communicate across disciplines. They're building technologies with real-world applications. They're gaining confidence by solving problems that don't yet have obvious answers.
And perhaps most importantly, they're discovering that innovation rarely happens within the boundaries of a single major.
Inside Cy4CEA, students aren't just growing crops.
They're growing alongside one another, combining different skills, perspectives and passions to build technologies that could help shape the future of agriculture.