We are pleased to announce that Prof. Dr. Wonsuk (Daniel) Lee has been appointed Editor-in-Chief of the newly established Section “Smart Agriculture” in Sensors (ISSN 1424-8220).

Name: Prof. Dr. Wonsuk (Daniel) Lee
Email: [email protected]
Affiliation: Department of Agricultural and Biological Engineering, University of Florida, Gainesville, FL 32611-0570, USA
Homepage: https://abe.ufl.edu/people/faculty/wonsuk-lee/
Keywords: precision agriculture; machine vision; sensing systems

Prof. Dr. Wonsuk (Daniel) Lee is a Full Professor at the Department of Agricultural and Biological Engineering at the University of Florida. He received B.Sc. and M.Sc. degrees at Seoul National University, Korea, in 1986 and 1988, respectively. In 1998, he received his Ph.D. in Biological and Agricultural Engineering at the University of California, Davis. His areas of specialization include sensing systems, precision agriculture, artificial intelligence, farm automation, Global Navigation Satellite Systems (GNSS), geographic information systems (GIS), near-infrared spectroscopy (NIRS), image processing, machine vision, yield monitoring/mapping, variable rate fertilizer application, instrumentation, machinery, and agricultural mechanization. He draws from all these areas to develop solutions for a wide range of agricultural problems, and is currently working on developing sensing systems for specialty crops for precision agriculture in Florida.

Lee's skills also include a wide range of supporting technologies and novel applications, such as autonomous weed control systems, immature green citrus fruit detection, autonomous yield mapping for immature citrus fruit, apple Marssonina blotch (AMB) disease detection, citrus greening disease (Huanglongbing) detection, blueberry fruit detection for yield mapping, citrus black spot (CBS) disease detection, and strawberry flower and fruit detection for yield prediction. He is a Fellow of the American Society of Agricultural and Biological Engineers (ASABE).  

Prof. Lee shared with us his vision for the journal and his views of the research area and open access publishing:

1. What appealed to you about the journal that made you want to take the role as its Section Editor-in-Chief?

The Sensors journal has a good reputation with a high impact factor and fast manuscript processing. Recently, smart agriculture has become one of the most attractive and interesting research topics around the world. I have been working on developing sensing systems for crop production during my career, so I wanted to contribute more to the development of sensors and sensing systems for agriculture by serving as the Section Editor-in-Chief.

2. What is your vision for the journal?

In the Section “Smart Agriculture”, I would like to introduce state-of-the-art technologies for sensors and sensing systems for crop production, animal production, and aquaculture. Most of the time, sensors and sensing systems in agricultural environments need to be rugged, reliable, inexpensive, and easy to use for future adoption. More emphasis would be placed on applications to actual agricultural implementation. 

3. What does the future of this field of research look like?

More efficient crop production will be needed to feed the exponentially growing world population. So, more automated sensors and sensing systems will be developed considering labor-intensive work in agriculture and the current labor shortage. Artificial intelligence is rapidly adopted in agriculture and will play a significant role in smart agriculture.

4. What do you think of the development of Open Access in the publishing field?

I agree with Open Access, which provides convenient and easy access to research articles and rapid propagation of newly developed technologies, as long as publishing charges are reasonable and affordable.

We warmly welcome Prof. Dr. Wonsuk (Daniel) Lee in taking up his role as Section Editor-in-Chief, and we look forward to him leading Sensors to many more milestones.