Illinois ARCS receives S$10 million grant to develop AI-powered agricultural digital twins
SINGAPORE — The Illinois Advanced Research Center at Singapore (Illinois ARCS) has been awarded a four-year, S$10 million grant by the National Research Foundation (NRF) of Singapore to develop advanced digital twins that could help strengthen food security and agricultural resilience in Singapore and across Southeast Asia, integrating real-world farming environments with virtual systems.
The new program, Advancing Knowledge-guided AI to Develop Agricultural Digital Twins for Singapore’s Climate Resilience (KGAI4Ag), will bring together researchers from Singapore and the United States to develop foundational AI technologies that integrate real-world agricultural observations with virtual models. These “digital twins” will allow researchers to simulate how crops and agricultural systems could respond to changing environmental conditions and management practices. KGAI4Ag will develop a multi-modal fusion framework that integrates microscale, real-time field farm data with global remote sensing data, using AI to evaluate potential farm management practices and improve forecasting.
KGAI4Ag directly addresses a strategic priority for Singapore: strengthening food security and climate resilience while positioning Singapore as a regional hub for agri-food innovation and green finance. As a country that imports more than 90% of its food, the program’s digital twin framework is designed to support forecasting and management improvement for various key crops (e.g., row crops like rice and agroforestry crops like cacao) throughout Southeast Asia, helping policymakers, industry, and potentially farmers in the general region adapt to greater climate and supply chain variability.
The program is co-led by Professor Kaiyu Guan, Levenick Professor of Sustainability in the department of natural resources and environmental sciences, and founding director of the Agroecosystem Sustainability Center University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, and Professor L. Roman Carrasco, deputy head (research) in the department of biological sciences at the National University of Singapore.
Guan will leverage his expertise in tracking agricultural ecosystems and environmental impacts using advanced knowledge-AI-hybrid modeling and remote sensing; Carrasco will apply spatial bioeconomic modeling and lead the work on analyzing the impacts of proposed interventions on the agroecology.
“KGAI4Ag will bring together artificial intelligence, scientific knowledge and real-world observations to create digital twins that allow us to explore how complex agricultural systems may respond to different interventions, from field to regional scales. By connecting these virtual systems with what is happening in real-world agricultural settings, we aim to develop forecasting and decision-making-support tools that can support more productive, resilient and sustainable agriculture,” said Guan.
An important goal of KGAI4Ag is to understand how agricultural interventions translate into outcomes across landscapes.
“Our work will connect ecological, spatial and socioeconomic models to evaluate the broader impacts of different strategies and identify opportunities to strengthen both agricultural resilience and environmental sustainability,” said Carrasco.
This initiative builds upon a robust multi-institutional partnership, bringing together researchers from Illinois, NUS, Nanyang Technological University, University of Minnesota, University of Wisconsin-Madison, Cornell University, University of Arkansas, and University of Maryland. The interdisciplinary team combines expertise in AI, agricultural and environmental sciences, remote sensing, modeling, and engineering. More than 15 researchers, including professional scientists, postdoctoral researchers, doctoral students, and research interns, are expected to contribute to the program in Singapore.
“Illinois ARCS is uniquely positioned to bring together world-class research, technology and international partnerships to address emerging challenges in agri-food and climate resilience,” said Senior Vice Chancellor of Research and Innovation Susan A. Martinis of Illinois. “KGAI4Ag builds on that strength by connecting researchers across disciplines and institutions to develop foundational AI capabilities with potential applications well beyond a single crop, farm or country.”
The program is hosted by Illinois ARCS, an affiliated Singapore company of Illinois, which has been part of the NRF’s Campus for Research Excellence and Technological Enterprise since 2017. The KGAI4Ag program is the third core program of Illinois ARCS and contributes to the center’s vision to address complex global challenges in areas such as sustainability, health, and advanced technologies for Singapore and its neighboring regions.
The core team members across the institutions whose dedication, expertise, and ongoing contributions have been instrumental to this initiative include Arindam Banerjee, Shenlong Wang, Lesly Goh, and Sheng Wang at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign; Xiangzhong Luo, Lin Shao, Mike Shou, and Lian Pin Koh at the National University of Singapore; Licheng Liu at the University of Wisconsin-Madison; Simon Redfern and Sang-ho Yun at Nanyang Technological University; and Vipin Kumar at the University of Minnesota. As the project progresses, collaborators from other institutions will provide further contributions to this international collaboration.