Matthew Donovan, CEO of UF startup Agriculture Intelligence, will join a distinguished panel including leaders from Bayer, ESRI, and farm-ng on “Technology & Industry.” The company licenses technology from UF researcher Ioannis Ampatzidis and incubates at UF Innovate | Accelerate at The Hub. Donovan’s session promises an in-depth exploration of advanced technologies reshaping agriculture, highlighting both the emerging challenges and the transformative opportunities.

“We are excited to address how technology is meeting industry demands for practical solutions,” stated Matthew Donovan. “We’ve recently been redefining the process for leaf nutrient levels in citrus. With support from SBIR USDA NIFA Phase I and II grants, we are able to match the accuracy of traditional lab results, but without inconsistencies inherent in sample-based methods and pair it with a downloadable management zone-based prescription fertility map. We think this is the kind of actionable intelligence that growers need as we try to meet global food production demands.”

Aitor Moringo is executive vice president of Satlantis, the U.S. subsidiary of a 10-year-old Spanish company that makes satellite technology used to study the earth from the International Space Station. Its secret sauce is a “super resolution” algorithm that allows for non-blurry images in space. The technology has applications in other industries, like agriculture, where companies are increasingly using images to study the health of crops.

Matthew Donovan is one of Moringo’s neighbors at UF Innovate, the business accelerator at University of Florida. His company, AgIntel, sells software that allows growers to analyze the nutrients in a plant. AgIntel was relying on ground sensors and drone imagery for analysis until Donovan met Moringo at the incubator last year.

Accelerators like UF Innovate are crucial to the early-stage economy, and to innovation in the United States. It’s at places like these that new technologies can be brought to the market, including technologies that with a profound effect on people’s lives and health. One UF Innovate company, for instance, is MYOLYN, which makes therapy systems for people with neurological disorders and injuries, like multiple sclerosis or stroke.