Keynote:
Prof. Simone Silvestri
“Internet of Agricultural Things: How Computer Science Can Help Next Generation Farming”

Abstract
Farming is experiencing increasing challenges such as higher costs, difficulty of finding skilled
laborers, need to increase efficiency and product quality, and public pressure to provide better
welfare to animals. Internet of Agricultural Things (IoAT) technologies, such as weather and soil
sensors, sticky insect traps, automatic feeders, cameras, RFID tags, etc., offer a plethora of
opportunities to address these challenges.The collected information can be used to enhance the
farm operation by, for example, detecting the onset of animal illnesses or insect infestations,
provide information on the need for irrigation or plant health, etc. However, it is important to take
into account, through interdisciplinary collaborations, relevant aspects such as farmers’ needs,
farms’ economy, and practicality, to define efficient methods with the potential of successfully
addressing the above mentioned challenges. In this talk, we provide an overview of IoAT
technologies and, subsequently, focus on the specific problem of early detection of Bovine
Respiratory Disease (BRD). BRD is an infection of the respiratory tract in cattle that is not only
economically costly, but the second leading cause of disease and death in young dairy calves. We
discuss how IoAT technologies can be used to design interesting computational problems that
combine machine learning with optimization, to maximize efficiency while reducing costs. We
discuss the data collected by 106 calves observed during the preweaning period of 50 days, and
show the ability of our methods to early detect BRD and allow early treatments.

Keynote Speaker Bio
Simone Silvestri is currently an Associate Professor in the Department of Computer Science of the
University of Kentucky. Before joining UK, Dr. Silvestri was an Assistant Professor at the Missouri
University of Science and Technology. He also worked as a Post-Doctoral Research Associate in the
Department of Computer Science and Engineering at Pennsylvania State University. He received
his Ph.D. in Computer Science in 2010 from the Department of Computer Science of the Sapienza
University of Rome, Italy. Dr. Silvestri’s research is funded by several national and international
agencies such as NIFA, NATO and the NSF, and he received the NSF CAREER award in 2020. He
published more than 80 papers in international journals and conferences including IEEE
Transactions on Mobile Computing, IEEE Transactions on Smart Grids, ACM Transactions on Sensor
Networks, IEEE INFOCOM, and IEEE ICDCS. He served in the organizing committee of several
international conferences including as General Co-Chair of IEEE ICNP, Technical Program Co-Chair
of IEEE SECON, IEEE SmartComp, and IEEE DCOSS. He also served in the Technical Program
Committee of more than 100 conferences, including IEEE INFOCOM, IEEE ICNP, IEEE SECON and
IEEE GLOBECOM.