Technologies for Agriculture and Living Systems
What if the same technologies that help us grow more food could also conserve our ecosystems and help our communities flourish?
The College of Agricultural Sciences envisions a future where advanced technologies help create sustainable, resilient agricultural systems interconnected with the living systems that sustain them.
A new vision for twenty-first century agroecosystems
The Technologies for Agriculture and Living Systems (TALiS) initiative is a unique, holistic approach that balances the need for increased food productivity and efficiency with a dedication to conserving our vital living systems.
These living systems include agriculture but also the adjacent forests, wetlands, and waterways—along with the biodiversity of plants, insects, and animals, and the resilience of our rural and urban communities. Pennsylvania’s landscapes offer an excellent testbed for integrating technologies across these different types of agriculture, natural, and social ecosystems. We envision Pennsylvania as a leader in developing and testing these integrated agroecosystems, serving as a living laboratory for scalable and practical solutions.
The TALiS initiative establishes a framework and roadmap to grow and support an entire pipeline of technological solutions, from early development to real-world application. These innovations in farming and ecology dramatically improve our ability to monitor and manage production and access to food, biodiversity and natural resources, and human health and wellbeing. This approach ensures a stable food supply, promotes environmental conservation, and boosts the economy of Pennsylvania by fostering innovation and creating new job opportunities.
Leading balanced innovation through the TALiS initiative.
Developing and testing emerging and advanced technologies from the lab to the field.
Serving as a trusted convener of audiences to address complex issues.
TALiS Practitioners at Penn State are faculty from the College of Agricultural Sciences who are experts in their fields and practice under one or more of TALIS's three pillars: Robotics and Automation, Biotechnology, and Monitoring, Sensing, and Prediction.
Latest News
December 17, 2025
Genetic teamwork may be the secret to climate-resilient plants, researchers find
A plant’s success may depend on how well the three sets of genetic instructions it carries in its cells cooperate, according to a new study led by plant scientists at Penn State. They found that when those genes are better matched in hybrid plants, the plant is more resilient to changing environments.
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December 15, 2025
Evaluating the evaluators: How do plant virus genome analysis tools stack up?
Learning more about the genome structure of defective virus copies has the potential to reveal clues about the virus’s biology, but researchers found that five tools available to identify these defective genomes from data obtained through next generation sequencing datasets may be inconsistent.
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December 8, 2025
AI-enabled monitoring system could help keep dairy calves healthy
Bovine respiratory disease (BRD) — a type of pneumonia — is the leading cause of death for dairy calves after they become accustomed to food other than their mothers’ milk, resulting in economic losses at over $1 billion annually for the U.S. cattle industry. To detect BRD in dairy calves before they show obvious symptoms and reduce those costly losses, a team of researchers, funded by a new three-year, $1 million grant from the U.S. National Science Foundation, intend to create a system that uses modern sensing technologies and advanced artificial intelligence.
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December 4, 2025
Eyes for an agricultural robot: AI system identifies weeds in apple orchards
To help apple growers achieve such precise management, researchers at Penn State are developing an automated, robotic weed-management system.
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Meet the Director
- Professor of Agricultural and Biological Engineering
- Director, Technology in Agriculture and Living Systems Initiative, College of Agricultural Sciences
Areas of Expertise
- Specialty crop mechanization and automation
- Precision agriculture applications for specialty crops
- Applications of artificial intelligence to agricultural systems management and control
- Email hzh@psu.edu
- Office 814-865-2633
