CHAMPAIGN, Ill. – Kaiyu Guan, founder of EnterpriseWork startup, HabiTerre and scientist in the College of Agricultural, Consumer and Environmental Sciences, has been named the recipient of the 2025 national agInnovation award for Excellence in Agricultural Research Innovation. The award was given in recognition of Guan’s contributions to agroecosystem science, particularly his efforts to improve food security and environmental sustainability. Guan, who was also recognized with the North Central regional award earlier this year, serves as Chief Scientist of NASA Acres and is the founding director of the Agroecosystem Sustainability Center at Illinois. Through his efforts to advance modern agriculture by leading interdisciplinary teams, he has collected over $40 million in research funding, published more than 180 scholarly articles, and received multiple national awards. Guan maintains affiliations with several research institutes at Illinois, including the Carl R. Woese Institute for Genomic Biology, the Institute for Sustainability, Energy, and Environment, the National Center for Supercomputing Applications, the Center for Digital Agriculture, and the Siebel School of Computing and Data Science. The agInnovation organization represents the national network of State Agricultural Experiment Stations, established under the Hatch Act of 1887. It supports multistate collaborations aimed at addressing critical challenges in agriculture, food systems, and natural resource management. Guan will be honored at a September ceremony alongside ACES Dean Germán Bollero, who will receive the 2025 agInnovation Excellence in Leadership Award. Research in the College of ACES is supported in part by Hatch funding from USDA’s National Institute of Food and Agriculture.
