This project is collaboration between Dong Ha (PI, ECE), Jin-Hee Cho (Co-PI, CS), and Robin White (Co-PI, Animal and Poultry Science) at Virginia Tech, and Swarun Kumar (PI, ECE) at Carnegie Mellon University. PI and Co-PIs have the following expertise and background to support the proposed research.

Dong Ha (PI) is a full professor with ECE at Virginia Tech and Founding Director of the MICS (Multifunctional Integrated Circuits and Systems) group consisting of four faculty members and about 30 graduate students. He has a research background in circuit and system design, including analog, mixed-signal,
and RF. Recently, he has worked on wireless nodes for various applications, such as electric car battery monitoring and system and building block design for downhole communications for oil and gas exploration. His team also designed and prototyped power management circuits and systems for various energy sources, including solar / indoor lights, vibrations, thermal / body heat,
RF signal, and a combination of multiple sources. He is a Fellow of the IEEE.

Swarun Kumar (PI) is an assistant professor at CMU and an expert on wireless networks and mobile systems. He has made key contributions in accurate RF-based indoor positioning and efficient communication in wireless local- and wide-area networks, all including large-scale deployments. He has made key contributions to low-power wide-area networking and sensing, including a series
of novel systems that improve the range, scale, energy-efficiency and throughput of these networks. His work particularly on low-power WANs led two best paper awards at Information Processing in Sensor Networks (IPSN) Conference in 2018 and 2020. Kumar led the earliest, large, low-power WAN deployment in the US in Pittsburgh. He has received multiple best paper awards and was recognized with the NSF CAREER award and the Google Faculty research award.

Jin-Hee Cho (Co-PI) is an associate professor in the Department of Computer Science at Virginia Tech. Her expertise is in the areas of cybersecurity, decision making, and network science. Cho has conducted research on uncertainty-aware deep learning frameworks that provide resilient learning and decision making in the presence of evasion and poisonous attacks. In addition, Cho
has developed lightweight solutions in Internet-of-Things (IoT) environments for intrusion detection, optimization of node lifetime, and trust-based routing and intrusion detection in nodes. Cho also has developed trust models for smart service community in IoT and energy-efficient smart home IoT. Cho is a recipient of the PECASE award and has received four best conference paper awards and two best journal paper awards. Cho is a senior member of the IEEE.

Robin White (Co-PI) is an associate professor in the Department of Animal and Poultry Science at Virginia Tech. She has the expertise in the areas of mathematical modeling, precision agriculture, and animal nutrition. White’s research program centers on the animal / environment interface focusing on identifying strategies to enhance efficiency of pastured animal production systems. White’s work in this area leverages mathematical models and meta-analysis. White also leads an effort expanding the Smartfarm Innovation Network (TM) infrastructure at Virginia Tech. White is PI or co-PI on two cyber-physical systems and one robotics proposal funded by the USDA, which focus on expanding technology use in ruminant animal production. White is a member of the ASAS and ADSA.