**Zhao Zhang**

Dr. Zhao Zhang earned his B.S. and M.S. from Northwest Agricultural and Forest University, majoring in Industrial Design and Agricultural Mechanization Engineering, respectively. He then earned his Ph.D. from Pennsylvania State University in the area of Agricultural Engineering, after which he joined USDA as a postdoc research fellow. He joined North Dakota State University as a member of the faculty, and focused on precision agriculture. He finally joined the College of Information and Electrical Engineering, China Agricultural University, as a member of the faculty, working in sensing and automation in agriculture. As a team member, he earned the Rain Bird Concept award of the American Society of Agricultural and Biological Engineering for his contribution to the development of a prototype of an in-field apple sorting system. The developed in-field apple grading and sorting system can work at a throughput rate of 12–15 apples per second, and the fruit bruising ratio is lower than 5%, thereby meeting industrial requirements. Additionally, Dr. Zhang developed an apple-harvesting robot that can pick apples automatically, within which deep learning technology has been used for fruit detection and localization, and a newly developed end-effector has been used for grasping and detaching. The prototype has gone through multi-season field tests, and the technology currently being improved and readied for commercial application. Dr. Zhang also works on phenotyping, mainly focusing on developing autonomous technology for phenotyping information collection.
