In his role as a computer vision engineer at Precision Planting, Jeremy Carnahan (MSIM '21) is part of a team that is making agriculture more productive and sustainable while reducing costs for growers.
Where do you work, and what is your role?
I am a computer vision engineer at Precision Planting, a subsidiary of AGCO Corporation. My role on our vision team is to build active learning solutions that acquire, curate, catalog, and balance field data used in training machine learning models for intelligent agricultural sprayers.
What do you like best about your job?
The best part is trying different approaches to extract knowledge from data. For instance, an image is just an array of values usually ranging from zero to 255; however, through a combination of math, statistics, and machine learning, we can tell the type of crop or weed, distance, height, health, weed density, field conditions, etc. With this knowledge, there are a lot of great outcomes we can enable for growers and the environment, such as saving money and reducing chemical usage.
Why did you decide to pursue a degree in IM?
For me, information management was a great fit for combining technical and sociological disciplines, which I felt would help me make better products for people. Other programs that I looked at focused too heavily on technical aspects and largely ignored the human-centered considerations that are core to the MSIM program.
How did the iSchool help you get to where you are today?
I had a background in data management, but analytics was really what I needed in my previous role. The MSIM class offerings provided me with a variety of options to focus on specific approaches with guidance from the instructors. This flexibility allowed me to tailor the program to suit my career goals, unlike other inflexible curricula that required me to follow a predefined path.
What advice would you like to share with iSchool students?
The depth and breadth of the instructors' knowledge is really stellar. It is worth the time to learn more about their research interests or past experiences. One of those conversations completely changed the way that I approach data design in my projects today.
What do you enjoy doing in your spare time?
I enjoy traveling with my family and playing video games with my kids. In a previous life, I was a pilot, so I still like to attend air shows, aviation museums, and do a little flight training when I can.