Tuskegee University students won first place in the Analytics and Decision Support category at the National Precision Agriculture Hackathon, according to an April 9 announcement. The three-day event was held during the Center for Digital Agriculture 2026 Champaign-Urbana AgTech Week at the John Deere Innovation Center in Urbana, Illinois.
The achievement highlights efforts to make precision agriculture accessible to farmers with limited resources. The winning team developed “CropVitals,” a tool that uses publicly available crop-relevant data to help farmers maximize crop yield without relying on expensive proprietary platforms.
Team members Eniola Olakanmi and Meghan Franklin, both Ph.D. candidates in Agricultural and Environmental Sciences Engineering, along with Cameron Jones and Kalon Jones, senior Computer Science majors, overcame travel disruptions that caused them to miss a full day of the event but still secured top honors. Dr. Mark A. Brown, President and CEO of Tuskegee University, said: “Tuskegee students are being prepared to solve the world’s most complex, real‑world problems—just as George Washington Carver once did for farmers facing economic hardship caused by soil depletion. What made this win extraordinary was their resilience. Despite travel disruptions, they showed up, adapted, and won. That determination and problem‑solving mindset is #TheTuskegeeWay in the Renaissance Era of Tuskegee University.”
Faculty advisors Dr. Gregory C. Bernard and Dr. Joseph E. Quansah provided guidance throughout the competition alongside support from Ariel Polk and Dr. Olga Bolden-Tiller.
Dr. Bernard said: “One of the biggest challenges for many farmers today is not simply access to data, but access to tools that make that data useful… When technology meets farmers where they are, it has the potential to level the playing field in ways that matter.” Team member Cameron Jones added: “Our goal was to create something that farmers could realistically use… With the right data and thoughtful design, impactful solutions can be built using open resources.”
CropVitals integrates satellite imagery from Sentinel-2 for vegetation analysis; NASA POWER data for atmospheric conditions; USDA SCAN data for soil moisture; and produces a Crop Vitality Score with three categories—Healthy, Monitor, High Stress—to simplify decision-making for users without advanced technical expertise.
Dr. Brown noted this project echoes George Washington Carver’s Jesup Agricultural Wagon—a mobile classroom introduced in 1906—which brought practical agricultural education directly to rural communities.
Dr. Bernard concluded: “They were not just trying to build something impressive for a competition – they were working to create something that could have real value for agriculture and farmers… Their combination of technical skill and genuine mission-driven commitment is exactly what moves a good idea into something that can make a real difference.”