Title:	From Smartphones to Smart Fields: Rethinking Mobile Systems for Software-Defined Agriculture
Speaker:	Prof Hakim Weatherspoon Cornell University Ithaca, NY, USA

Abstract: Agriculture is rapidly transforming into one of the largest real-world deployments of mobile and edge computing. Modern farms span thousands of acres populated by mobile robots, battery-powered sensors, autonomous vehicles, and distributed bioinstrumentation—all operating under severe energy, connectivity, and environmental constraints. This talk introduces the concept of the Software-Defined Farm (SDF), a unified architecture that treats farms as programmable cyber-physical systems composed of mobile sensing, actuation, and intelligence.

SDF integrates heterogeneous, resource-constrained devices through an open, low-power Internet-of-Things substrate, enabling continuous observation and closed-loop control of crops and livestock at unprecedented spatial and temporal resolution. At its core is a hybrid modeling framework that combines mechanistic system models with data-driven learning, allowing the system to adapt to biological variability, environmental dynamics, and operational uncertainty. Mobile sensing and robotic actuation form the physical interface, while edge and cloud components collaborate to support scalable analytics, bioinformatics pipelines, and real-time decision making.

This talk argues that software-defined agriculture represents a new frontier for mobile computing, where extreme intermittency, energy constraints, and physical embodiment fundamentally shape system design. I will discuss the architectural principles behind SDF, lessons learned from early deployments, and the emerging research challenges in building resilient, scalable, and autonomous mobile systems that operate directly in the physical world. These challenges highlight opportunities for the HotMobile community to help define the next generation of mobile-edge systems for large-scale, safety-critical, and environmentally embedded applications.

Biography: Hakim Weatherspoon is a Professor in the Department of Computer Science at Cornell University, Co-Director of the Cornell Institute for Digital Agriculture (CIDA), Cornell Bowers College of Computer and Information Science Associate Dean for Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, and Belonging, and the Chief Scientist of Exostellar, Inc (http://exostellar.io). His research interests cover various aspects of fault-tolerance, reliability, security, and performance of internet-scale data systems such as cloud and distributed systems. Weatherspoon received his PhD from the University of California, Berkeley. Weatherspoon has received awards for his many contributions, including the University of Washington, Allen School of Computer Science and Engineering, Alumni Achievement Award; Alfred P. Sloan Research Fellowship; and a Kavli Fellowship from the National Academy of Sciences. Weatherspoon has also been recognized for his work to promote diversity, earning the University of Washington, College of Engineering, Diamond award and Cornell's Zellman Warhaft Commitment to Diversity Award.