Well, I knew there was a need for the product because I wanted it and I couldn't find it It's a pretty simple idea.

The actual methodology behind it is not so simple.

Mosquitoes kill almost three quarters of a million people each year and sicken millions of others.

Most of the clothing we wear do not block mosquito bites.

Auburn researchers have developed a mosquito resistant fabric, and they are now hard at work to make sure that the clothing is breathable and comfortable to wear in hot and humid environments.

I think if you're a young person and you're interested in making an impact in this world, where else could you better do it than in the food system?

I think you'll find it on rooftops, I think you'll find them in backyards.

I think the future of agriculture is starting right here at Auburn University.

You will also learn how Auburn students are growing food to serve their fellow classmates.

Our College of Agriculture and Partnership with Campus Dining are using converted shipping containers to vertically farm and grow vegetables for our students year round.

These containers can grow vegetables that would normally take 15 acres of land.

So to feed the world and help food deserts, this technology is part of our future for vegetable farming.

This is the War Needle Knitting Lab, and what we focus on is trying to re-engineer clothing manufacturing so that we can block mosquito bites.

Most clothing does not block mosquito bites.

And so if you think of like under armor or athletic wear, that you want to wear outside when it's hot, that does not block mosquito bites.

So when people say wear long sleeves, it doesn't actually protect you.

Well, when I first joined the project, when I first heard about it, I was told that I was going to be 3D printing clothing that blocks mosquito bites, which is not necessarily what we're doing.

We're kind of doing that.

But I thought it was really cool.

And so, of course, as soon as I was offered the job, I accepted it.

And then I get here and the machines weren't initially here yet and things kind of started pretty slow for me.

But once the machines got in and things really picked up, my research started to really pick up.

Everything got really exciting.

I was super happy about it.

Especially from being out, being from Alabama, we all hate mosquitoes.

So you get this opportunity to block mosquito bites and work on making clothing that can do that.

And you think this , wow this is going to be a really awesome idea.

I might be famous.

So I guess that's what attracted me.

I just thought it was a really cool idea and a really great opportunity When I finished my bachelors at University of Florida, my primary advisor there told me that whenever you're thinking about moving on, you should always think about going to a new location.

Because once you're at a new location, you get new skills, you get new faculty, advisors, different people to see.

So I came here to Auburn, I worked under Dr. Hu in Urban Entomology.

After I finished my Masters, I was thinking about applying that same logic by going to a different school.

I had previous offers from University of Florida.

I've corresponded with Ivy League schools.

I even had an interview with a Harvard professor.

However, it didn't matter what I heard from any of these other professors.

Dr. Beckmann's voice was always ringing in the back of my head because of how innovative the technology is that he works on.

Nowhere else at any of these other labs have I been exposed to the opportunities that I have here at Auburn.

Especially in his lab.

I mean, look at these machines back here.

Most other entomology labs, they're not having knitting machines, let alone a wet lab where you're doing biotechnology work on a molecular level.

So the fact that I can combine both of those under one advisor, honestly, was a, it was an easy choice.

None of the other schools could compete personally So we have a very simple project in the sense of what we're trying to do.

Trying to block mosquito bites but it's very complicated engineering because you need to close the pores of the textile to block the mosquitoes proboscis.

And yet also keep it comfortable.

It's very difficult It's not just sort of adding to the density of the fabric.

It's more about the structural geometry of the fabric.

And you don't want to close all the holes.

You want to keep it open.

Otherwise it's not comfortable.

You can you can wear leather if you want to protect yourself from mosquito bites.

But nobody will do that in the South because it is not comfortable.

So it's more about the geometry.

We're trying to understand what are the microscopic knit geometries that we can construct that can either confuse the mosquitoes proboscis when it's probing or block it in a way by making the path trajectory of the path harder to access the skin.

The first variable that goes into this is the construction of the fibers.

So what are you using?

Are you using cotton or polyester or hemp?

And how are you making those fibers?

if they're synthetic you're pulling them out in a thread extruder, Or are they or if they're if they're natural, you're you're spinning them.

So what we're trying to do is spin novel combinations of different fibers.

So we have a spinning wheel and a thread twister.

And the primary goal of those is to try different combinations of different fiber inputs So what I do in this team specifically is I'm the thread twist expert or the thread master.

So that machine that you see behind me, what it does is it it'll spin our different yarn threads together in various different directions or coils or twists whichever way I want to manipulate the string.

And then hopefully with that product of a twisted string I can run it in the thread, in the STOLL machine and make different geometry types of knits So this is a STOLL ADF flatbed knitting machine.

It's got two beds of needles.

The front bed and the back bed that kind of form this triangular structure.

And along those rows there's about 900 needles.

So it's a very it's a very fine knitting machine.

And so there's 900 needles on the front bed and 900 on the back bed.

And those needles get pushed up and down as the carriage...

So the carriage is the is the metal square block that moves back and forth.

And as it moves back and forth, the instruments in the carriage push the needles up and down.

So you can do a back knit or a front knit.

You can do a pass, which is essentially you pass a needle, you can transfer one knit to the front or to the back.

And so there's many sort of different comb almost almost infinite in some sense.

And then plus you have rows.

So if you have one row, one structure in one row, and then you change a structure in the next row, and then you vary these patterns that can create a totally different three dimensional knit that comes out.

This is our secret ingredient, this is the one.

It's CNC, so it's computer numerical control.

We designed the knits on the computer over there in STOLL M1 Plus software.

And through that, we export those files and we can just plug it into the machine.

And it sounds simple.

It is simple in the sense of it's simple to start trying in it, but it's actually much more complicated than that.

You have to be very comfortable with the machine and understanding of the machine because every single knit needs to be optimized with different parameters.

For example, the carriage speed or the belt take down speed or the the tension at which the thread is coming in.

Oftentimes you have needle breaks oftentimes you have the fabric getting bunched up.

Oftentimes you have situations where a thread will break.

So it's not it's not simple every knit has to be optimized and tested.

And it's a long, intensive process.

I work on the STOLL flatbed knitting machine.

Being an engineer, I thought that machines were supposed to work like 100% of the time.

You program the machine, it's going to make what you want to make, and then that's it.

So I thought, like, oh, this is going to be great.

I'm going to program it to make this and it's going to work perfectly.

We've got this machine.

I'm going to get out of here in a jiffy.

It's going to be awesome.

That's not how this machine necessarily works.

There's 800 something needles on this machine and each one of them can break in an instant just because I run something slightly too tight or slightly too loose, or I run a yarn that's a little bit too thick.

And so a lot of the challenges I faced were just trying to optimize the machine to run the things that we wanted it to make to run the yarn that we had.

And there's a funny story where I tried to make a particular knit and it kind of like bunched up in the machine.

And I broke like 300 needles at the same time.

Richard had to help me fix the needles.

We were in here for like hours trying to get them all replaced.

It was not fun, but you know, you learn through breaking things, and so the more errors that I ran into with the machine, the more I've learned how to fix it.

And now I feel like, you know, I know this machine in and out.

Anything that goes wrong with it, I can pretty much fix it instantly.

I have been sewing for seven plus years now.

I actually got an email thread sent to me from one of my past professors while I was finishing up at Mississippi State.

They strictly went to me about it because they knew I had two undergrads in biological science and then fashion design product development.

My specific role on this team with having a textile background I get to take all our textiles that some of my coworkers make, and then I get to put it into a sleeve, and then I get to test all the comfortability of all of them.

And then later down the road, we'll be able to prototype clothes To prototype clothes, you had to make patterns.

So I usually take measurements.

So everyone in the lab actually has a different measurement of arm.

So when I make them a specific sleeve, I take their measurements, make a pattern for it, and then sew it together.

So it perfectly fits To test the fibers, it's a very simple test in the lab, the other lab we have the mosquito lab.

So the research I do a lot of is I do bite blocking testing.

So I rear the mosquitoes.

And once the sleeves that we build in our lab are done, they're transferred over to me to do the actual physical testing.

So I rear the mosquitoes.

I take care of them.

And I set up for all the experiments that we do so and also do the actual tests myself.

we have a primary strain of mosquito that we culture.

In the lab, It's name is Aedes aegypti and we feed it off human blood.

It's preferential blood is human blood.

So we feed it from our arms.

We have Auburn approval to do that.

We also have another type of mosquito in the lab called Culex pipiens, which we're currently feeding on rabbit blood.

So again, different mosquitoes, they like different things.

And so when you culture them, you have to you have to give them what they like Well, I always remember the first time when I learned how professors rear mosquitoes when I was in graduate school, my I remember being blown away the first time I heard that, people will put their arms in the cage That's actually pretty pretty common.

that to rear them It's a pretty common way to rear them.

So that's that's how I started.

And I should also say I'm not the only one at Auburn that has mosquitoes.

There's there's a lab next door that's also rearing mosquitoes.

And there's also a lab in the vet school that's rearing fleas and lice and things like that.

So these bizarre things that bite humans, in order to study them, you have to rear a colony of them and that's one of the difficult parts of our job.

But it's also it's also necessary.

Most of the colonies in the lab that we're starting where they're not wild caught mosquitoes, they're typically somebody who's been rearing them for a while.

And it's just like a pet.

somebody who has a source for this pet and they'll You contact they'll send you some they'll send you some eggs and you can kind of like start up your own colony.

So that's that's how our colonies are started in the lab so the testing follows the lines of whenever we are ready to do the actual sleeve testing, we separate mosquitoes so in this cage we have right here, we have males and females.

So the only mosquitoes that bite are females.

So if you want to test bite blocking, you got to get the females out.

the females and we put them on ice and then separate them out So we asperate because they're all asleep.

So we separate them out.

I'll get 20 per cage and then once that's been done, we let them wake up recover from being in cold and all that stuff.

And then following that we actually do the sleeve test.

So we put the sleeves on our arms and then stick our arm into the cage for 15 minutes Measure biting the number of bites.

The number of fed females, females just sitting around, stuff like that.

That's the negative control is just a bare arm in the cage.

How many bites you get you usually get about 20 with 20 females, then the then the test to test the textiles, you just put a sleeve on, you just put your arm in there and you just sit for 15 minutes and the mosquitoes will voraciously like peck at you try to get through the textile and if the textile succeeds in blocking you'll come up with zero bites.

It's a very simple experiment.

We have other tests.

We've done full body experiments where we have a mosquito cage.

You stand in the mosquito cage and what we're trying to hone in on there is mosquitoes actually have preference for certain regions.

So one of the regions they like is the upper back.

And so by identifying the preferential regions, of where they like to bite, we can optimize clothing that might be specifically very good at blocking in that region.

But maybe in the other regions where they're not blocking, we leave it more open, more comfortable so that's some of the other tests.

And then also we have fabric tests designed to try to optimize the comfort it's for obviously environments where mosquitoes are at.

So for our clothes So they tend to be in humid environments.

So I do a water wicking test to see how fast our fabric can wick water away.

And obviously if it doesn't wick very fast and holds water, it's just not a very good product that I would like to sell.

And then a thermal conductivity, I would make the sleeves go into an incubated room and measure the temperature to see if heat is releasin or if my body is raising or if it's remaining the same The one thing that people don't understand about mosquitoes.

A lot of people do get concerned about the ecology and the environment, and a lot of people do not want us to say like try to eradicate all mosquitoes.

The one thing I'll say is that's not really what anybody is trying to do.

There's keep in mind that there's many different types of mosquitoes, and it's really just a few really bad ones that bite humans.

Those are the ones that we want to target.

to remember that those mosquitoes, like Aedes albopictus, Aedes aegypti.

And it's important Those mosquitoes have actually evolved to live with humans like we're their primary food source.

So it's almost like there are rats or cockroaches that live around us.

And so it's not really going to cause big problems in the environment if we if we figure out ways to reduce the the burden of these mosquitoes in the instance of my background of pest control, pest control is a it's a harsh industry in that there's a lot of off target consequences of using massive amounts of pesticides.

So if you can step away from the chemical application onto other insects and just focus on one particular target without the use of chemicals and all the effects that come along with it, that's that's really good on its own.

And it's also with the usage of clothing for bite blocking it's a it's cheap when it's mass produced and done correctly.

And also it's long term chemical applications are not a they are short term they are a short term application that doesn't always last as long as you would want them to.

So if you have a T-shirt or a long sleeve or some pants or anything like that, then you can wear for years and years to come that blocks these materials.

Your instances drop a lot and also helps those who may not have the actual funds to have those applications done.

This is definitely not what I thought I was going to be doing five years ago.

No, I thought I would be in a vet office, you know, working on dogs and cats, like a snake or a cow or something, but definitely not something this small.

maybe like an I always thought I was going to be working with bigger animals, but following this path working with mosquitoes, I think you have a larger impact on more many more individuals than just working on the one the eye opening thing for me.

So I come from an entomology background, which means basically a lot of information about insects, you know, the morphology, different things about insects.

So from working on a machine like we see before, I'm not used to that type of, you know, hands on experience with like actual equipment like that.

So a lot of troubleshooting is one thing that I get into, but also an appreciation for how different types of machines operate as well as how different machines can operate and work together to give us the types of products that we want on our end goals in our in our knits.

It's crazy how I can take that machine back there, take two threads, twist them together and get a product that I can then run in our subsequent machine over there.

And I think that that's pretty cool.

I really like that, and I think I really learned a lot from doing that.

It's interesting because one thing I like to think about is like the end goal.

You always want to see the clothing that prevents the mosquito bites.

I want to be in the tank.

I want to have no mosquitoes bite me and be around a whole bunch of them.

But honestly, a lot of fun comes in troubleshooting, fixing errors.

Just last weekend I came in here and I was trying to work on making a couple of different fabrics and I had a machine issue.

I fixed it.

It took me about 3 hours to fix, and after I fixed it, I had a couple other issues and I fixed it, but I was able to get the product done and there's something satisfying about having a completed project.

I know, for example, like builders, they'll say once they're done with a building, you can look at it, you can appreciate what you have.

And I think especially with science or as a graduate student, do a lot of hands-on research.

You do a lot of hands on building or manufacturing.

So when you can see your finished product, whether it be a textile that's made, whether it be a paper that's been published to a, you know, a journal of your choosing, when you can see these things, it really makes you feel a sense of accomplishment.

And it also shows you that you've completed the task best day recently was so halfway through my time here.

I think the So far, I took up the mosquito rearing from one of our other lab mates and because he's, he's leaving, it's about time to start passing the torch on to others.

So I took a mosquito rearing, and it was very difficult at first, because we're up taking this colony that's like kind of low in numbers.

very frustrating And I'm basically building up what's what's kind of low at the moment.

We had a day not too long ago where I had we reared so many mosquitoes all at one time that we were able to run, I think, ten tests all at one time.

Normally that's like that's a lot of mosquitoes all at one time.

It was very satisfying to know that the months of work that I'd put into taking care of these these animals, that it's paid off and allow me to collect data for our project.

So that was a really satisfying moment not too long ago.

And from then on now I've been able to collect hundreds and hundreds.

And it's just it's been really satisfying to know that all this upfront work that I've placed in is actually coming to fruition.

So where are we in the process?

I actually feel much more positive and optimistic about the project than I have since it started.

I really think we're on a trajectory toward success, like most of the significant hurdles have been overcome.

So in the beginning of the project, it was actually very difficult to set up and figure out what netting technologies we needed to make the project successful.

We've already accomplished that.

We now have our lab here that we're capable of iterating different types of textiles, and we have discovered about six different types of structural knits that will block mosquito bites.

So now it's really just a process of engineering.

Like we know that the concept is valid.

We know that we can block mosquito bites in relatively comfortable textiles.

So now the project is just the biggest challenge right now is can we make them as comfortable as we can possibly make them?

Our research lab in Auburn is very excited about this project because the goal is to not only just sort of make this product, but to improve the economy of Alabama.

So if the project works well, it's our goal is to produce the product in Auburn in Alabama, and it's also a product that I think Alabama people of Alabama would like it's not just for a very specific person, but it's also for hunters, the average person that likes to go outdoors or just someone that's even doing yard work I'd say the biggest thing I've learned so far, especially with dealing with mosquitoes and any other scientific research, is there's a lot more to know than I currently know.

And I've learned a lot working with the mosquitoes.

But at the same time, it feels like I've only learned a drop in the bucket compared to what's actually out there.

And but that's also a nice, nice thing to know because who knows what you can learn from here and apply using that knowledge apply to help others or further the project that we actually are working on I've made some really awesome friends.

When I joined the lab initially, I made a really good friend and then these guys joined after me and you know, we've we've been really close.

We've taken very similar classes.

We've studied a lot together for some of those classes pretty late at night, drinking a lot of energy drinks.

I'm proud of all my coworkers and where they're at.

And so the challenges kind of lead to new opportunities.

And, you know, you just have to kind of roll with the punches.

And, you know, sometimes you'll be successful, sometimes you won't.

But if you keep trying, odds are you end up it'll end up working out typically people think of science as very cut and dry.

There's not much creativity that can be applied.

I actually think that's not the case.

So in my spare time, for example, I do stand up comedy.

I'm a member of a Auburn modeling board as well as a House leader there.

And that actually ties into my project as well because, you know, we're trying to make clothing that blocks mosquito bites and the fact that I understand how certain modeling agencies work as well as clothe clothing and clothing brands like that, it's kind of cool because I can twist in what I'm doing with my research with you know, fun things like walking, modeling, taking photos shoots, things like that.

One thing that Auburn's really given to me, one thing I was trying to look to when I was choosing a college is majority.

I wanted to work into product development.

But a lot of places in America actually didn't have the type of athletic product development that I was looking for.

You would have to go to London or Asia or even Canada where Lululemon is.

So Auburn University was the only one that actually gave me something that had something to do with athletic and fashion as well.

For the kids who are considering graduate school, for people who are graduating their undergraduate and maybe they don't want to go work the big boy jobs yet if you go into graduate school and you find a professor that's got funding from either a grant or, you know, built up funding on a project that they're working on, then you actually get paid and your classes are paid for as well by the grant and the research that you're doing.

So tuition is completely paid for and covered.

You get a stipend, which is enough to live on.

You know, it's a good amount and yeah, it's basically a 40 hour a week job, but you get to go to classes All that's paid for and you get another degree and all it takes is two years.

during that time.

It's a lot of fun textiles that block mosquito bites would be phenomenal for everybody, even if it's like daily life for people who maybe don't encounter mosquitoes that have like might carry diseases, but more importantly for people in third world countries that do encounter mosquitoes and diseases every single day malaria, Zika, Zika was very big not that long ago.

Dengue, yellow fever, all these different diseases.

So that's what led me here was that I wanted to do something to help other people and animals I was to say thank you to everybody out there who has helped me so if to get to my position today, where I'm able to lead research projects, I would say thank you to my high school teachers, my high school science teachers, my chemistry teacher.

I would say thank you to my Ph.D. advisor Dr. Ann Fallon, who was really brought me into mosquito research.

I would say thank you to my postdoctoral advisor, Mark Strasser, to succeed in science, you, they say we're standing on the shoulders of giants.

You definitely have to be kind of brought up in the system and you kind of apprentice for many years with with mentors.

So I would say thank you to all my mentors and of course, my parents.

young person and you want to help the world solve problems, If are a the research, the first thing you should do is start identifying problems that you see yourself.

So I can give the example of how this project started again is it was a problem that I saw that I thought I had the ability to fix potentially.

And so if you are out there, take note of the problems that you see in your society.

Or the problems that you see in your in the context in which you live.

Write us down in a notebook and as you go to university, like look to try to solve those problems.

And if you solve one of those big problems, there will be big economic rewards for you.

So that's what I would say is just have a problem solving mindset and the world will continue to improve if everybody just does that I say the biggest thing, if I were to tell someone a lot younger and they've they have an idea of coming over and they're still unsure if they get in of what to do, they shouldn't worry about that too much because I was in the same position myself.

Auburn is a nice place in that they provide multiple and multiple opportunities that are just basically endless.

I walk into my undergrad and unsure of what I'm doing.

There's so many things I can explore.

Like I did a fellowship from undergrad that allowed me to explore entomology research that I previously thought I would never have done.

It's just all over this university of endless open doors.

It's just a matter of walking through those, and you should never be scared to walk through these doors.

So my research program here at Auburn University is focused on controlled environment agriculture.

So there's different kinds.

There's greenhouse horticulture, there's a vertical farming, which is what we're standing in right now.

And then really, I guess you could say it encompasses urban farming as well.

So things that can be done in cities whether you have a controlled environment or not.

For instance, we have a rooftop garden that we've started now.

So basically urban agriculture in the case of vertical farming, we can control all the variables white humidity, temperature, CO2, nutrients, water, all the things that you need to grow a good healthy crop.

We can control them in vertical farming.

And so what that does for us is it provides the ability to produce crops anywhere.

So we have a growing population we know that at least globally, we have a growing population and there's a lot of talk about how to feed that growing population.

So what I would say is that vertical farming can play a role in this it can play a role really if you think about in terms of locality.

So we can put these anywhere, right and then quality.

So we want to improve people's quality of their diets.

And so fruits and vegetables certainly can do that.

But from a caloric content standpoint, we're going to get most of our calories from grains and from meats we're not going to grow grains or meats in vertical farms.

So we still need traditional agriculture and we need a really strong traditional agricultural system but again, the the vertical farming and the controlled environment sort of revolution, what it's going to do is going to improve access to high quality, nutritious vegetables for people, especially when you think about food deserts, urban environments where food, where high quality food is hard to come by.

Oftentimes well, we can put vertical farms there and there's a lot of talk about doing this.

And there's you know, cities are investing in this.

Large companies are investing in these technologies.

It's not a it's not a magic bullet by any means, but I think it does have a role to play in the future for sure.

I like to call it the parking deck innovation of agriculture.

So it's kind of like a parking deck.

You take a space, well how do you pack more cars?

Well you stack them up vertically.

So so you can grow so much more food in such a more compact space for these urbanized cities.

And so I do think this will be up and coming along with rooftop gardening as well.

Let's let's turn these rooftops into something productive.

Let's be efficient with agriculture.

So with the increased population and the urbanization of many cities, finding places that don't have food deserts is getting more and more difficult.

So as a person who wants to feed the community, I found a passion in vertical gardening to hopefully be able to place these freights on top of buildings and alleyways.

Anywhere where food is fresh, food is not always an option for people So behind us right now, we have bok choy and we have a couple of different types of kale.

The other things we grow in here, we grow arugula, we grow lettuces, we grow parsley and other types of herbs.

So all those crops here at least once.

A couple of things in common require, let's say, about half the light that a tomato plant would require.

these crops Also, they require a lot less space.

So you can see they're nice and small and compact and they don't require pollination.

So those are all three things that are really, really important.

And that's the kind of stuff that we can grow.

So tomatoes and other fruiting crops require, you know, at least double the amount of light that some of these leafy vegetables do.

So the question is, can we grow tomatoes or other fruiting vegetables?

In in controlled environments like this under all artificial lighting?

And the answer is yes.

But the challenge is that we have to increase the amount of light that we have, the the quantity of light that increases the energy demand, that increases the heat load, that we then have to evacuate with air conditioning.

So again, energy costs would be really high.

Another problem with growing vining crops is that they're not small.

They they take up a lot of space.

And so space is at a premium here.

In vertical farming and in you know, the way that you can really maximize yields is that you can stack these crops on top of each other.

So all of a sudden you get into a vining vegetable or something that takes up a lot of space.

So there's a lot of work being done in that area.

But I think right now the most profitable crops are things like lettuces and other leafy greens a lot of the topics in environmental science are, you know, what are our environmental issues?

We're feeding the planet water scarcity.

So I feel like that's one of the things about this is that it's very water efficient.

That's something that gets discounted about these traditional agriculture uses 70% of the water usage on the planet so with these we can cut that back by, you know, bounds and leaps.

I think that's very important.

Water stressed countries, you know, we can grow, 110 gallons can grow, you know, 8000 head of lettuce.

You can never do that in a traditional, you know, farming field not even close.

That's insane.

So I think that gets a lot.

You know, people don't really think about how much water that you actually use and I think that's important and you know, really just all the environmental aspects of agriculture in general because it's so huge, you know, like there's so much to it and it's the ground floor of society, so let's improve it.

And I think that learning that aspect of it and how to make it better is, you know, definitely the most important talk in the vertical farming industry about there's a lot of quantity of yields, let's say, and displacing, you know, farmland that's being used or saying we can replace, let's say, 15 acres in one shipping container.

I think that's probably a conservative estimate.

That's about right.

In a year long production in Alabama, this one shipping container could probably do what 15 acres in the field could do.

But there's trade offs there, right?

So that doesn't go into unit calls and that type of thing.

And plus that's for the that's for our our location.

But I think that thinking of it in terms of yields and replacing farmable land is not the whole story.

I think that we need to think about quality.

Again, if you're going to grow controlled environment, vegetables in a in a space like this, there's going to be additional cost that we have to consider.

And that means that we have to have really really high quality.

And that's what these systems allow us to do.

So that's one thing that's really exciting about vertical farming in this system.

We plant seeds, so let's say lettuce.

Lettuce is a good model crop.

So we will seed and we will grow those as little seedlings for about three weeks now.

We could we could do that faster, but we kind of controlled the environment just right to to get them ready in three weeks.

Then we transplant them into the larger system and they spend another four weeks there.

So in seven weeks we go from a seed to a full head of lettuce One example I like to give is in Yuma, Arizona, they grow a lot of lettuce in and from transplant to finish.

It's about 80 days in the field so we can do it in 28, 35 days in controlled environments.

So it is a rapid process, but the best part about that is not so much that you can get a lot of turnover, all thata's important, but you get ultimate predictability.

So from a food system perspective, we know exactly what's going to come out exactly when.

And it's great for restaurants, it's great for local food systems and in our case is great for this sort of campus dining connection we have because assuming we're doing our job right, we know exactly what's going to come out of this farm in two months, three months, seven months down the road, what is neat about these freight farms is that you are 100% in control of all your climate conditions.

You know, even in a greenhouse, you're not 100% in control.

But there's nothing in here that you do not have control of the io system that controls the freight.

It controls light, which we use blue and red light.

And the LED panels that are about six to eight inches away from the plants.

It controls the temperature, it controls the nutrients dosage, it controls the pumps, the aeration system, the recirculating system, the drip emitters, it controls mostly everything in the freight when things are not going the way we do, we can we can change and so one of our factors, you know, like maybe we should do this or this.

So that is important.

In problem solving.

I think that problem solving in these is is a good way to get problem solving skills because you need to do process of elimination.

You need to look at your plant and you need to say, well, you know, this, this and this.

This may be causing this.

And then you can change it with your technology on the control panel.

And it's just and it's just that easy.

And then if that don't work, then we turn it back and you can problem solve So the technology brings in very, very valuable problem solving skills again.

my experience is for every level of control that you have, we have ultimate control in here.

There's less and less room for error, which again is why we need smart people coming into this field.

But yes, anybody can do this.

This is not you know, it's not hands off like people think of it.

It's not like you're farming from your phone.

We can we can certainly do that a little bit.

We can watch what's happening.

But we have to be making decisions and being here and troubleshooting So it's a really dynamic system and it's a really dynamic field and changing things.

that we need a lot of talented young people to come into So my responsibilities at the vertical farm is to control the entire system itself.

And then I decide when we plant, when we transplant the nutrient solutions making sure everything's up to date in the freight, I give tours.

There's a lot of cleaning that goes into these and, you know, just kind of like up keeping things and making things look nice and just just kind of working the plants and trimming the plants.

And then we harvest every week and then that will go to the Edge dining.

So everything that we produce in this shipping container farm goes directly.

I mean, it's less than a mile from here.

They come pick it up on an electric golf cart.

It goes over to the Central Dining Facility on campus.

It's called The Edge Having the vertical farms is really giving us a new level of experience for students.

So not only our students growing it, it's being served here in our dining hall.

And other students are getting to participate in that learning experience.

What does it mean to have something that's grown locally that's super fresh?

Right.

That has been harvested within, you know, a day Right.

we have 38 different locations on campus, and then we have 320 different points of sale and concession.

So quite a bit of food.

I I think that first of all, there's, there's this thing that says, Hey, this is we put an Auburn sticker on it, right?

We said Auburn grew this and there's an instant value to that.

For anyone that goes here, right?

We can put an Auburn sticker on pretty much anything and it's where we love it, right?

So there's that brand loyalty that we already have.

And so, yeah, someone that maybe wouldn't have tried a vegetable or a fruit because, you know, maybe it's not their thing.

Normally they might try it because, hey, we, we grew that here.

It's special a pride of ownership from our students who grew it.

you know, there's There is a pride with our faculty in teaching those students and there's a pride in getting kids to consume it because it's something that was made here.

I love just being able to go to the edge and watch people make a salad and know that I was able to do that for them and be a part of that.

I love to go buy the spring mix.

Oh my gosh, I grew that.

You not touch that.

So that's exciting.

I also love to like when there's pictures posted or anything we like, you know, I did that.

Like that's mine.

There's a lot of value in it.

When when parents we had our first camp War Eagle today we were talking to parents about growing food locally.

That really resonates with them.

Our students have grown up with the message of sustainability.

There's a great deal of value in being able to tell those stories in part as part of what we do every day in supporting our state and the agriculture that's that's going on in partnerships with local farms and farmers, but also supporting the College of Agriculture.

20% of the purchases for for our dining halls have to come from local sources.

And so obviously we've been partnered with the College of Agriculture But we're we're excited to be partnering with some Black Belt farmers this year for some of that.

to get additional produce from the state of Alabama.

We defined local as being within 200 miles of Auburn or anywhere in the state of Alabama.

We want to prize Alabama farms and farmers and anywhere any way that we can.

And so we're excited to see that continue to grow.

I feel like 20 is a 20% is a jumping off point and we want that to grow and grow and grow our typical day is about between 21 and 24,000 transactions per day.

And so it's a, it's a busy campus and so we could serve quite a bit of our population each day.

The school system in the state of Alabama is the largest restaurant in the state by far, purchases more food than anywhere else I think about it anyway is what this is going to allow us to do the way is allow us to not rely on huge food hubs like we always have.

So for instance, most of our vegetables, the majority of our vegetables come from Mexico and California.

Well, with the use of controlled environments we can eliminate at least part of that need I think alternative growing methods and vertical farming in particular is really the future of farming.

It's predictable.

You know, you're going to see chefs desire greens at certain points in their growing cycle.

So maybe not microgreens, but not a full fledged green, but like a mezze as a midpoint where you get the flavor but you get the tenderness of a young plant.

I mean, there's so much that we are still exploring and having that type of ability to grow things to a certain point, not to mention just for the from a volume standpoint, being able to feed as many people, you know, with as as populations continue to grow and being able to have food closer to these big metropolitan areas, being able to have a farm that is not far from New York City versus having a farm that would normally be quite, quite a distance.

And those types of things I think are really going to impact the supply chain.

It creates less food waste when I get when I get produce from the vertical farms, I've got a great deal of time to be able to utilize.

It hasn't been on a truck.

It's not been two weeks since it was originally harvested.

And so that right there, it takes so much waste out of the supply chain.

There's so much loss, both from a distribution standpoint as well as here within a restaurant right.

So not having that loss is also a big component one of the you know, one of the other ways that we're working to reduce food waste is that we have a partnership with campus kitchens and if you're not familiar, Campus Kitchens is a food recovery network, and basically they collect unserved food from our dining hall.

So food that did not go out on the line, but that was maybe created.

But didn't get served and they take that we we blast chill it.

And then we actually they re portion it and then serve it in meals to our local community.

This spring they were serving as many as 500 meals a week in our community.

We also serve lots of students that have that our food insecure on campus.

So it's been a great partnership and one where I feel like utilizes the food.

I mean, I think that's the most important aspect from a sustainability standpoint.

The first the first tenant should be to feed the hungry people, right?

Composting is awesome, but let's feed the hungry people first.

And I think that's an important thing that we're doing as well.

We are working with a couple of we are working with Biosystems Engineering as well as chemical engineering and in both of them are working on different ways that you can use food waste.

But from a compost standpoint, we had a biosystems engineer that was using the some of the solids from our aquaponics project to work on growing algae.

That would be a precursor for plastics.

We're also using project to do food waste for methane production as well as breaking it down and then have it there's there's components that can be used in different ways.

Some of it would be compost, some of it would be for sale as a precursor for plastics.

So there's lots of interesting things that we're doing around the idea of reducing food waste in that food is a resource at every state that we don't waste it because again, whether it's being converted into something else, into a compost where we can grow more food or it's used in some other commercial way, that's the way we should be thinking of it It's always a resource.

It's never something to be wasted Well, I think, you know, for for kids in the state of Alabama, maybe if you're thinking about a career in agriculture, that used to mean that I'd be driving a tractor and that's not the case anymore.

There are a lot of different ways that you can be involved in agriculture that aren't the traditional farming, and that's really where these vertical farms come in.

It's the latest technology it's using.

You can run it from an iPhone.

It's nontraditional agriculture.

I mean, the technology level that we have just in this unit right here and we have air conditioning technology, we have computer control systems that that are really complex.

We have hydroponics systems that are delivering water and nutrients.

And all these things have to work in conjunction.

There's challenges here.

What we've learned in operating these types of systems is that for every level of technology, every level of control we have, it takes, you know, increased awareness of what's happening.

It actually decreases our room for error.

So we really need smart people coming into this field.

You don't have to have a traditional agricultural background.

It certainly is fine if you do.

You don't have to.

And you can apply the things that you're interested in.

Maybe it's computing, maybe it's, you know, it's A.I.

or it's engineering of some sort.

Maybe you are a farm kid, but you are tired of the long, hot days outside.

Right.

Vertical farming can provide sort of a connection to the food system that's unique the first installation of what we're calling the Transformation Garden, so this is which we think is going to be a transformational experience for our students that are coming in to the College of Agriculture.

In other colleges as well.

We employ undergraduate students in this system and they run it.

So I originally thought I was going to go into the medical field.

I took EMT basic and I kind of found a passion to help people.

And I really thought about what's the best way to help everybody.

And I kind of landed on agriculture because everybody needs to be fed and I have a passion for the environment.

So I kind of married all of those passions together and landed on horticulture I am a little farm kid, a traditional farm kid, and then I got to come in here and see the technologies and the new things and how we can improve it.

And it was just like a whole new experience.

But you also have that background in your traditional agriculture, and so you can relate those two things.

And what can you do better and what are you doing wrong?

And I think that's important to improving the future of food so I didn't grow up in a family that had any type of agriculture.

I have no background in it.

I was not expecting to be in agriculture, but doing research and I actually had an amazing ag teacher in high school who really helped me push into this.

So I got involved with this originally because I took Dr. Wells is hydroponic class and then there was an opportunity for a special topics class to have these freights be installed and have the ability to learn about how these systems work.

And I asked Dr. Wells if I could be a part of that.

So I was able to be on the ground floor of these systems, and then I just carried on and got to be able to work in these.

And I've made it all the way to being the head grower of the vertical gardens.

So I'm really proud about that.

I take a lot of pride in the fact that I can feed other students just like me at Auburn University.

One thing that I really enjoy about working the fruits is that you know, we're student run, and so you come in and it's overwhelming, but really it's all, you know, it's all ran by students, and there are three of us that worked in the past and it was just amazing to see how well we collaborated together.

And when you get a good system go and everything just works so smoothly, and here there's not a lot of space in here.

whenever you're working good together, everything just seems to mesh.

But, you know, So it's totally student run.

And we've run two freight with three students.

So it's a good experience and you get really close because you are really close literally in here.

So it's a it's a good working with other students and watching other people grow.

And so they get hands on learning opportunities.

They learn how to kind of run a small business.

They work as a team and they see the food in the entire system from seed all the way to plate we do have worker student workers that work here in the edge as well.

So it's it's definitely something we want to see.

We're excited to have the new Culinary Sciences Center of the Range Center come online because that there's more experience to be had over here.

We do a lot of different things.

We want to learn how to to make an omelet you don't make two omelets in class.

You make 100 omelets serving them over here.

So we can give them a lot of experience.

And we're excited to be a partner there.

If you feel like it's too hard to do, then you should do it.

That's all the more reason for you to do it.

Anything that you think is too challenging for you is something that you should do push yourself, even though it's kind of out of your comfort zone, like these normal, you know, your traditional former kids like me, you come into these and you're overwhelmed.

Well, it's a challenge.

It's a good thing.

It makes you more well-rounded Anything that is too difficult for you is a good opportunity for you.

Probably one of the proudest stories that we've had so far is that we actually had a graduate student that was recruited from our program, that he was working in both the farms and aquaponics.

And because of that knowledge base that he acquired when he got his master's degree, he got hired immediately.

And so that's a great story for us.

And that's something that we want to see happen again and again and again as this is a a center for alternative growing methods for a variety of ways to grow produce all over the world.

That's the best part about, you know, to me to working here is I get to hear about things like that and participate in them.

I get to see students learning these type of really cool badgers that, you know, you never knew.

I mean, I was an undergrad here.

I didn't really have a lot to do with AG.

And now we've had these incredible partnerships and I've learned so much about how do you grow food?

why is it important to have alternative growing methods and, You know, and all those types of things?

So it's been a really cool partnership.

it's a great environment to work in at 70 and overcast all the time in here.

You know, And we're farming so it's nontraditional, but we're providing food and it's really hands on environment, a great learning environment.

And it's something that I think a lot of people are interested in is taking technologies that exist and applying them to, you know, essentially solve problems in the food system.

I would say this I'm optimistic about the future of vertical farming.

I don't think it solves all of our problems, but it certainly has a lot of potential.

And so you think about AI technology, robotics, you know, people that are coming into the field, new ideas, there's a lot of room for expansion in this area.

And we're going to learn a lot over the next five to ten years.

We're going to see because there's been a lot of startup companies and some of them fail and some of them succeed.

And what what is it that makes that company succeed?

We'll learn a lot in the new companies that come behind will do better.

So I'm I'm bullish on the future for sure.

All right.

So what we see for the future is continuing this partnership with the College of Agriculture so that we have multiple methodology.

So we might the next methodology might be in a warehouse environment and that would allow for more experimentation for the college.

And so those are the things that I think for the future of our program.

We want to make sure that we're visiting.

We have a large aquaponics system that's on campus.

We see that as is definitely something that will expand in the future.

So these partnerships are really important from a learning environment.

Obviously, we love the idea that we get the the product right.

So that's a great part for us.

But, but, but the primary reasoning is to make sure that there's a, the learning is going on, the research is going on, and so that when we are able to figure these things out economically, we can bring that to the state of Alabama and allow farms and farmers all over the state to utilize what we learned