I hope everyone enjoyed the long weekend and celebrated America’s 250th birthday safely! Fireworks displays were canceled throughout Northern Neck Virginia due to the weather. That didn’t stop private displays from taking place but it offered my dogs a bit of relief. Summer is here and it is hot out there! But that didn’t stop fun seekers from joining Tom Flores and Lindsay Barranco at a mead-making workshop held at the Shady Grove campus a week ago this past Saturday. More than 50 people signed up to attend but unfortunately participation had was capped at 20 mead makers. I suspect there will be more workshops in the near future to showcase the fermentation science program.
I continue to meet with candidates for our open AI faculty hires. Hopefully you have had a chance to participate in portions of the interviews. This is an impressive slate of candidates who are interested in joining departments across AGNR. I look forward to these new faculty advancing natural resources management and agricultural production through discoveries and training students. With these interviews on my calendar and top of mind, you can imagine how excited I was to learn about the new tool launched by Hemendra Kumar and team: SoyAI. SoyAI is a web-based platform that provides rapid and in-field identification of eight soybean diseases thus helping with early disease detection, improve diagnostic consistency and timely crop management decisions. I can’t wait to get out and see this important tool in action!
We continue to pull together information for our AGNR annual meeting with the Provost and her team. I thought I would share a bit of the data that Jessica Vernon has assembled. My takeaway: AGNR faculty are increasingly research active!
| FY | Dept $ | Proposal Count | Sponsor Count | Investigator Count |
| 20 | $170,940,499 | 497 | 173 | 199 |
| 21 | $181,337,775 | 435 | 162 | 197 |
| 22 | $212,004,875 | 403 | 172 | 189 |
| 23 | $199,155,365 | 495 | 182 | 202 |
| 24 | $286,325,626 | 472 | 169 | 204 |
| 25 | $203,405,055 | 383 | 143 | 187 |
| 26 | $279,163,901 | 513 | 178 | 220 |
Research Expenditures
| 2022 | 2023 | 2024 | 2025 | 2026 |
| $49,099,544 | $53,699,166 | 54,251,791 | $54,314,709 | $55,128,106 |
I think many around AGNR are on vacation this week. My calendar is a bit light but that gave me a chance to meet with the AGNR Communications Team, something I had yet to do. In addition to our AI faculty interviews, I will attend interviews for a campus leader in Facilities, Maintenance, and Operations. I am off Thursday and Friday this week then heading to Portland, Oregon for a meeting. I will admit that air travel does not excite me these days.