Background Synthetic Biology is a new field of research that applies engineering principals to biological constructs (Policy 2014). In essence, it boils biology down to its genetic building blocks and rebuilds brand new cells through robotics or a DNA printer (Policy 2014). While related to genetic engineering, synthetic biology extends the focus to entire systems of genes […]
Assessing the Impacts of Autonomous Technology in Agricultural Systems
Background For this project, autonomous technology, or artificial intelligence (AI), is described as “systems in which the designer has not predetermined the responses to every condition. Such systems are capable of surprising their designers and behaving in unexpected ways” (Omohundro 2014). This technology is attractive, especially in militaristic and economic contexts, because of the ability […]
Characterizing Success in AgTech StartUps
Background AgTech, an economic sector devoted to innovation in food and agriculture, has been around formally since biotechnology and seed genetics entered the market in the mid 90s, but only since 2013 has the sector seen rapid growth with new technology in big data, robotics, indoor agriculture, and more (Leclerc et al. 2015). This is reflected […]