Administration

UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. — Armen R. Kemanian, Penn State professor of production systems and modeling in the College of Agricultural Sciences, has been named director of the college’s Technologies for Agriculture and Living Systems initiative.

Often referred to as TALiS, the initiative represents a unique, holistic approach that balances the need for increased agricultural productivity and environmental performance, because they are both integral to vital living systems.

As director, Kemanian will guide the TALiS mission to grow and support a pipeline of technological innovations based on the unique strengths of the land-grant system in research, education and extension, from early development to real-world application.

He said these innovations are expected to improve the ability to monitor and manage production and access to food, biodiversity and natural resources, and boost the economy of Pennsylvania by fostering innovation and creating new job opportunities.

Kemanian is the right person to lead TALiS now, according to Troy Ott, Peter and Ann Tombros Dean of the College of Agricultural Sciences.

“Dr. Kemanian is an outstanding choice to lead the Technologies for Agriculture and Living Systems initiative and serve in this important science leadership role in the college,” Ott said. “I’m pleased he will be guiding TALiS, and I’m confident his longstanding work developing and advancing technologies that make agriculture more profitable and sustainable will help us continue delivering meaningful impact for agriculture and society.”

Ott expressed appreciation and gratitude for the wisdom and work of the initiative’s outgoing director Paul Heinemann, professor emeritus of agricultural and biological engineering. “I also want to thank Dr. Paul Heinemann for his leadership of TALiS and congratulate him on his retirement,” he said.

Kemanian noted that he is honored to take over as director of TALiS and said that the purpose and direction of the initiative have matured under Heinemann.

“This purpose rests on the simple premise — that I share — that agricultural technology can advance productivity and build a better environment and a better society,” he said. “My vision for TALiS is to strengthen our innovation ecosystem. Specifically, I would like for us to compress the timeline between discovery and implementation, and to build a durable infrastructure for that pipeline.”

Too much good work stalls at the publication and proposal stage, Kemanian said.

“I want to give researchers room to be creative in ways that lead to concrete technologies that can be tested, refined and commercialized,” he said. “Part of that means treating the agricultural sector as a living laboratory and treating ourselves as a force within it. Let us work together toward that vision.”

Kemanian will continue his research responsibilities in the college’s Department of Plant Science and in the Penn State Institute of Energy and the Environment. His research focuses on understanding and managing agricultural and natural ecosystems. Kemanian’s work integrates stable isotopes, micrometeorology, mechanistic modeling and machine learning to study the interactions among carbon, nitrogen and water cycling in agriculture. He is the lead developer of the field-scale CYCLES agroecosystem model and its watershed-scale counterpart, CYCLES-L.

His research program links fundamental research with societal concerns regarding agricultural productivity and environmental integrity.

Kemanian earned a bachelor’s degree in facultad de agronomía, Universidad de la República, Uruguay, and a doctorate in biological systems engineering at Washington State University. He joined the faculty at Penn State in 2010, after four years as faculty at Texas A&M University.

In addition to teaching several undergraduate courses at Penn State, including Plant Ecology, Environmental Biophysics, and Models in Agricultural and Natural Systems, Kemanian has supervised 20 graduate students, numerous undergraduate students and four postdoctoral scholars, and he has hosted four international visiting scholars. Graduates of his lab hold positions in industry, academia and government domestically and internationally.

Over his career, Kemanian has contributed 67 peer-reviewed publications and eight book chapters. His research program has attracted more than $6.5 million in funding to his lab, and more than $75 million overall, with sources including competitive external agencies such as the U.S. Department of Agriculture, the U.S. National Science Foundation, the Department of Energy, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. His program has attracted nearly $800,000 in externally funded graduate fellowships and undergraduate international research experiences.